This Online World of Tweeting . . .

Up until this week, I had never before entered the Online world of "Twitter".  I had certainly heard much about it, from TV,  the news,  the radio, and also from friends and people that I work with.  I have always avoided this new phenomenon of social networking because in my mind, it was just another way for people to point attention to themselves, for people who would rather spend a night in with their computer as opposed to actually going out and being a part of a real social event.  Don't get me wrong.  I love technology.  It is a huge part of my life, but I also believe that there is a line.  Maybe I'm a traditionalist at heart, but I would much rather enjoy a conversation with someone over a cup of coffee and have face to face contact with them rather then having to send persistent text messages or to imitate a conversation via my computer.  I always saw Twitter in my mind as a small replica of Facebook, in that it gives people the opportunity to talk about the mediocre details of their day.  What is so and so doing right now?  And how is so and so feeling right now?  Technology has given us so many extraordinary opportunities to be creative and to make social connections around the world and this aspect of it has always turned me off.  However, I do see some light at the end of the tunnel.

When I finally put my prejudices aside and created a Twitter account, I realized that this site does offer some resources for today's educator.  I found a really great Twitter from a French teacher in North Carolina who had a plethora of great resources and suggestions for implementing technology into the classroom.  I also found some Twitter-ers who had insightful educational tips on blogging or making connections online.  I must admit though that it did take me awhile to find some of these worthwhile accounts but they are there.

After reading the article, 27 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom, and watching the video, Better Learning with ICT - Online Communities in the Classroom, I have decided that the following ideas would be advantageous to my curriculum in regards to micro-blogging:

• Collaborate Classroom Views: in essence, create a mini-blog by having students write brief reactions to a story, a cultural topic from class, etc.
• Create a class story using Twitter rules - only 140 characters; have students work in small groups to develop different parts of the story and then come together as a class to see how our story came out.
• Online Penpals: working with a school (in a French-speaking country), assign students a penpal to "tweet" with; each week may be a different topic: sports, school subjects, weekend activities, preferences, films, music, etc.
• Monitor Students' Learning Progress: have students "tweet" about what difficulties they are having with material, questions they may have, interests they have, etc.
• Discuss Current Events in France: students can read articles related to current events and then "tweet" on one topic that they found very interesting; they could also use this to begin learning headlining format, etc.

All in all, I can see relevance to this new phenomenon.  Although I may not use it consistently, some of my prejudices have been disspelled and I have found some worthy "diamonds in the rough".

Google Wave

This evening I created a Blogline and one of the first Blogs that I added to my feed was "So You Want to Teach?" - a very up to date Blog related to education and technology.  They had just posted, as of today, a write-up as well as a very interesting and informative video about Google Wave, a new e-mail that will supposedly revolutionize online education.  I watched the video that they had posted and suddenly became fascinated by this innovative way of sending and receieving e-mail.  They suggested that besides making e-mail more user friendly and efficient, Google Wave also has the potential to influence online education.

They suggested that Google Wave has the potential to replace Wikis by removing some of the common issues that users face when creating and/or adding to Wikis.  Along with improving group work activity and giving students direct contact with their teachers online, Google Wave also helps those students who may have been absent during a group project assignment begun during class time.  Since there is a playback function incorporated into this new system, students have the ability to see what his/her group has already accomplished and will better understand what his/her role is for the group project.  This also gives teachers the unique opportunity to observe their student's progress.

I am very excited about becoming a new user of the Google Wave although it has not officially been released yet.  Until then, I will continue with my regular good ole e-mail.