Who I followed on Twitter and Why

On my twitter mission, I followed many new people while participating and exploring educational chats.

The first person I followed was "Preschool Learning", which can be found @preschoolonline on twitter. This twitter page contained many actives for preschool, educational and learning game ideas, healthy snack options and parenting and teaching tips. One of the tweets I favorited on this account was a tweet that contained a link and related to "Nursery Rhymes" and poems which is something we are learning about in one of my educational classes right now and how it enhances speech, phonemic awareness and metalinguistic language. This will be useful for me to gain better ideas and knowledge as it provides many links to further information and offers great websites to visit as well.


The second person I followed on twitter was Tracey Kracht, found @traceykracht who is a K12 Instructional Technology Coordinator. I followed her because she not only adds great tweets and links about how to incorporate technology in classrooms, but provides examples. As seen in my #Edchat blog, she is the one who showed the third grader using google hangouts. Her tweets inspire me to not give up hope on using technology in my classroom someday, and provides great examples of how to do so!

The third account i followed was @teach_preschool which is an account that promotes early childhood education (my field of education). Similarly to the first preschool account, this one offers more academic lesson plans, activities, crafts, and ideas for an early childhood classroom! I enjoyed looking at the activities she did with her kids everyday, and the articles she would tweet, such as an article explaining sensory ideas to stimulate the senses for children.

The fourth account I followed was Steven Anderson, who can be found @web20classroom
This twitter page ran by Steven Anderson, was a part of #Edchat and he also was an active blogger and educator who incorporated technology into lesson plans. I gained a lot from following his page and interacted with him by favoriting and retweeting helpful and insightful tweets. One tweet i really enjoyed and retweeted was "7 Real Ways Blogging Can Make You a Better Teacher and Learner" in which he added a website to follow, and really convinced me blogging is beneficial!

Finally, the fifth account i followed was @robynholsman who also is an Educational Technology Specialist. Some things i learned from following her was how to use Technology in my classroom. One thing that I found interesting and simple was an online socratic seminar...to me this wasn't complicated but a great way to kick it off with technology! Another really cool project she talked about was using vines for assignments. In which I think Kids would really enjoy! I favorited these tweets and then googled "vine projects in classrooms" as she made me very interested!

All of these accounts were very informative and contained tons of great ideas! I did not personally interact by tweeting at them or responding to tweets but by favoriting and retweeting so I will still always have access to my favorite tweets.

#EdChat

I followed #Edchat on twitter by Jerry Blumengarten over the past couple of weeks. It was overwhelming how many people contributed to the chat. Therefore, I did not interact by tweeting in the chat, but by retweeting or favoriting many of the tweets I found useful and was in agreement with. I found many tweets relating to the technology in the classroom to be very interesting and useful. In fact, one of the tweets that I favorited showed a third grader using Google Chat, which surprised me for such a young age! It encouraged me to not write off the younger kids to enjoying and being able to succeed with technology.

However, one of the difficulties I found with following the #Edchat was that many of the tweets contained just Little remarks like "Useful Information for the Teacher" and then contained a link that followed. Therefore, I wasn't sure what the tweet really involved, and would either skip over it and not open the link, or if i did, sometimes I did not find it to be helpful. When every tweet contains a site to open up or follow too, it tends to get lost in a sea of links and overlooked! I enjoy when they give a description!

My New Twitter Account

Setting up my new twitter account was exciting. I am probably one of the few who found this to be exciting, but it made the idea of me being a professional educator seem more real, and closer! I chose to make a new account because although my old or main one used for personal entertainment and communication is not inappropriate, it is not education related or extremely professional.

Some examples of why I created a new account would be from my main account containing tweets with improper grammar, personal conversations, or humor that everyone may not find to be entertaining.

I found it important to start off with a new account, that would be free from any questionable material and content. That is why I will keep this account strictly for educational purposes, and be cautious of what can be seen via my account.

My Beliefs about Technology in the Classroom

When it comes to my opinion on using technology in the classroom, it varies. I think technology is an amazing way to learn and can be very advantageous if used appropriately. With that being said, I think technology is only effective if applied and inserted into the appropriate grade levels; corresponding with age.

It is hard for me to know exactly when technology should be applied and will be truly effective, as I have never been an official educator and have spent most of my time in Kindergarten to 2nd grade classrooms. With that being said, I believe that is too early for technology to be used in a classroom for exploring/comprehension purposes.

I am fully in favor of using technology to help teach traditional curriculum in early education, but to use technology to TEACH technology does not seem appropriate at this age. I believe if technology is being used to teach and illustrate numerous ways to use technology, that should not be applied until the student's are around 5th grade, as they are more mature and their attention spans are longer.

Educators using Technology to Improve Student Learning

When using technology as the base of education in a classroom, there are many roles that need to be fulfilled.

The role of the teacher is to promote and enhance learning through technology in an appropriate, beneficial, and understandable way. However, it is extremely rare for every student to succeed or complete a task online without running into troubles and confusion. This is where I believe the teacher's most important role is revealed. When a student experiences difficulty or confusion with technology, it is vital that the teacher not only helps them fix the problem, but SHOWS them how to fix the problem in an understanding and approachable way. The struggle with technology, is that often times it cannot be tested in such a way we test for english, math, science comprehension. Every child learns at their own pace, and this remains true when navigating with technology. Therefore, the teacher will not be able to enhance education and allow for the technology to be beneficial and time worthy if they do not tend to each student and address issues with patience and understanding. The most important thing for the educator is to not TELL, but to SHOW. The teacher must take the time themselves to experience the student's struggles and illustrate how to navigate past that. When a student is receiving this help and attention from their teacher, they are more prone to enjoy and try harder with their assignments, thus, enhancing their education via technology. 

The students also have a very important role, as they are the ones who the technology based classroom is designed for. Their role is to approach the technology usage with an open mind, and a lot of patience. As discussed, technology can be challenging and has it's pros and cons. For the student, their role is to not just give up when they hit a "road block" but to try to figure it out themselves by playing around, practicing, and exploring the sites, portals and applications being used. It is vital that they do not just give up the second they face a challenge, and try to resolve the problem themselves by familiarizing themselves with the technology and accessing it in numerous ways. Technology will only be advantageous for the students if they truly give it their time and patience to explore it and become familiar with it, so that they can then apply it in education. 

With this relationship between the teacher and student with technology, it can often become challenging and time consuming. With that being said, the parents and community have a very important role in this as well. The parents especially need to be supportive and encouraging for both the teacher who is trying to educate in a more challenging, traditional way, and for their student who is being taught to learn in an unfamiliar way, that can instill feelings of frustration and impatience. The parents should be present and active in their child's new area of learning, and should try their best to help when needed, but also encourage their student to not give up, and challenge them to complete their tasks on their own. The community as a whole also needs to be supportive of these efforts. It is vital that the support is known by the educators and students, as they can then achieve their goals with the efforts of the community, and do not have to worry about being criticized. 

Finally, the knowledge that is being gained from the use of technology in the classroom needs to be age appropriate and beneficial in the sense that it correlates directly with the student's current grade level and expectations/assignments. If the material and knowledge that is expected is appropriate and corresponding, it will be more understood and accepted by the students. However, if the material is not suiting to the students, it will make for a much tougher time to have the interest, efforts and support of the students, parents, and community. This aspect falls under one of the requirements and expectations of the educator, that they implement and use the technology for the students in an appropriate and understandable way.