Thing #5 Microblogging

Easy enough to sign into Twitter. I can see how this could get addictive - reading losts of different posts. It was interesting to look at some of my favorites - Astros, President Obama, etc. But, I think that it would also be fun to follow other friends and colleagues. So, school use? Not sure how that would work exactly. Although, there could be uses for this - current events, etc. As I was wondering about this, I went back to the SBISD webpage describing the assignment and noticed
Nine great reasons why teachers should use Twitter. I find that I can agree with many of the ideas presented there. So, it can be a great way to expand your knowledge base and keep up with friends.

I experienced using back-channeling using Today's Meet at a GT workshop in early June. It was an awesome way to communicate without disrupting the session. I can see many ways that this would be helpful for students to post questions without fearing that they would be embarassed by expressing their ignorance about a topic.

Next, I'll look at Facebook. I've wanted to join, now I have a reason!

Added to this post: 7/31/09
I've been able to setup my Facebook account and requested quite a few friends. This was fairly easy because my husband is friends with sooooo many people, so I just looked over his friends list. Plus, I do have other friends as well and they were easy to locate and add. I'm looking forward to being part of this. Looks fun! The idea about using the book club app with older students for reading groups sounds interesting. I'll need to investigate more, but I'm doubtful that this will appropriate for elementary, mainly because of the age requirements.

Ta, Ta for now!