This week I read Kimberley Rivett’s blog eLearning 4 Life. Rivett is a primary teacher from Auckland, New Zealand. This might be a little bit random but I seem to have noticed that a lot of the blogs I read are from the Australia area. The article I read on Rivett’s blog was “To Tweet or NOT to Tweet.” I have friends that have given up Twitter and they claim that it has saved them a large portion of time. They think that Twitter, while it can be entertaining, also causes a lot of procrastinating. I feel like using Twitter for the classroom versus for personal life is completely different. I feel like when you use Twitter for your personal life, you often follow your friends and other entertainment things such as celebrities, products (such as Diet Coke), magazines, and a lot of anonymous/impersonator accounts. These allow you to become sidetracked for hours on end. You end up constantly updating your twitter feed and never getting anything done in return.
I feel like when you have an account for the classroom, you would greatly limit who you follow. For example, you would follow news sources and professional development resources (such as conferences, like Ted Talks). This allows you to see information directly related to your content area. Often times there is scrutiny on teacher-student relationships outside of the classroom. On Twitter, students can follow the teacher, but the teacher has the ability to not follow the students. This means that students will receive the information that they need, and nothing else. Teachers will be able to send out information that they need, but still will be able to keep their professionalism by not following their students.
All in all, I am definitely pro-Twitter for the classroom. I have teachers that use it and I think it is a great tool for teachers to use, that doesn’t involve a lot of extra work.