Twitter and Me

When I first heard that we had to make a twitter account I was not excited at all. Upon making my twitter account it asked me to 'follow' people. So I typed in all of the famous people and bands I knew and 'followed' a couple of them. Following the first day using twitter I was still a little hesitant about it, but after that I started to warm up to it. After using twitter to answer quiz questions I started to realize how useful twitter can really be.

I have discovered that twitter isn't only for posting silly tweets, although that may be fun. Twitter can be used to share knowledge and communicate with people from across the world. Twitter isn't only used by media infused teenagers but it's used by professionals in education! Following some of these educators is a great way to learn how new technologies are affecting classrooms.

What you put into a tweet is limited due to the set 140 characters. This makes it sometimes difficult for tweeters to tweet exactly what they want to say. This doesn't stop them though. People use twitter to ask questions about certain matters and ask people to 'Retweet it' if they agree. This gets information out quickly and effectively. There are hardly no downsides to Twitter. It is very easy to use and very easy to share and gather information.

The Final Frontier

I was first paired up in a group with two other people. Jessica Franklin and Jessica Smith were my group member. We had to create a presentation using Google Drive. Our presentation was to be based on the article 'Teacher Pedagogical Beliefs: The Final Frontier in Our Quest for Technology Integration?' by Peggy A. Ertmer.  I thought the article was very fascinating. It went into why technology is useful in classrooms and why teachers use it or don't use it in their classrooms. In summary the article addresses teachers pedagogical  beliefs and their technology practices. It goes into what teachers beliefs are, how they are formed, and how they can be changed. It also explains why some teachers are more reluctant to introduce technology in their classrooms.

The collaboration was a total success. At first I was a little confused about the whole Google Drive but as we began working it became easier and easier. Our group got together and assigned certain areas for each one of us. We all agreed that we would try to get on Google Drive around the same time. When we finished our slides we began commenting on what we could improve on. Google Drive was a very useful tool and we accomplished our presentation in decent time and we all had equal parts that we completed. In our presentation we focused on three main parts. Teachers nervous to use technology, Why use technology in the classroom, and How it is used in the classroom.