Week 10: Twitter/ Hash-tags

Section 1: Learning from hashtags

Learning about Twitter this week was very interesting for me. I am involved in social media such as Facebook, Pinterest and Snapchat, but I was not very familiar with Twitter. After exploring the different kinds of hashtags that were on the list, I found the hashtag #engchat very interesting. I am a first year teacher that covers English in a fifth grade classroom and finding resources that help me in the classroom is very hard. However, after reading the different kinds of posts that different people wrote and attached the hashtag, I found many good resources that help me inside the classroom, one of them had hash-tagged strategies on how to become a better reader. This was a very good useful tool that helped me in my classroom because I was able to research a person (https://twitter.com/Alex_Corbitt) who tweeted a flyer that gave the key point and some strategies/details on how to accomplish that goal. Since I was able to download the flyer itself, I feel like it would be a useful thing to send out to parents and have them work with their kids at home. Another tweet that I found amazingly resourceful and awesome is by the same person (https://twitter.com/Alex_Corbitt) and it tweeted an awesome resource that contained different technology applications that could be used depending on the activity or ability they want them to do. It is super amazing because those resources are categorized depending on the technology skill that you want to target either yourself or with the students and does not only apply it to English classrooms, but to any kind of subject and classroom grade level all together. After reading several posts with the tags that I chose, I found it is an amazing idea to hashtag the posts because in a way they are being categorized based on the hashtag and even give you related hashtags or tags that have similar posts to the one chosen.

Hashtag:

1.     https://twitter.com/Alex_Corbitt

2.     https://twitter.com/internet4classr

Section 2: Ideas for using Twitter for teaching and learning

Connecting with other teachers around the world

One of the ways that I would use Twitter in the classroom would be for myself as a 5th grade ELAR teacher. Since there is so many people using social media these days and so many different styles of teaching and methods that people are using around the globe, connecting, following or simply browsing different kinds of tags such as the ones we were able to explore with in this weeks’ assignment, will help and bring in new ideas that will reform or reshape classrooms all around the world. Having teachers connect worldwide is an amazing thought and even those who are not teacher, but who have amazing ideas either through their own programs, homeschooling, companies, or simply because they have a creative imagination.

Following the teacher through Twitter

            Another way that teachers can bring in Twitter into the classroom is having students follow their own teacher through social media. I see this as a new way of having students catch up on their daily assignments because the teacher posts the different concepts taught in the class, and also by having classroom resources in the internet can help the students in a way that it allows them to access it at any time rather than just when they are in the classroom or having them carrying all their notes around. This kind would most likely be for a high school ELAR setting classroom.

Researching and getting ideas from different followers

            A third way that teachers are able to implement Twitter into the classroom is by having students research through hashtags new concepts that are being taught in the classroom in order to see how that same concept is being taught throughout the world. By doing so, it will give them different perspectives as to how they are able to learn or retain the concept instead of just the teachers way of teaching. I would definitely use this for kids to follow in my 5th grade ELAR and Social Studies classroom.