Twitter Part 2

As I have mentioned in my previous blog post about Twitter, our class’ most constant homework assignment is using our Twitter accounts to tweet, retweet, or respond to other tweets about technology in education. We were also required to follow educators and organizations who post about using technology in school. On the last Twitter blog post, I mentioned that I started retweeting lots of posts from EdTech K-12 Magazine and some from Tara Linney. Since then, I have still mostly been retweeting posts from these users; but I have also retweeted posts from two other users which were Anna Vaughan and Richard Byrne. The former posted an article about connecting students and teachers through social media, which included a list of multiple social media that students can choose from. This list includes Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, Google Docs, Skype, Instagram,Tumblr. I really like this list because it encourages students to connect through videos and other sites that they would use besides Twitter or Facebook. The post from Richard Byrne that I retweeted was an article about a new polling service called Acquainted. According to the article, it is a conversational polling tool which is unlike the other ones. As for my frequent retweets, the most interesting post from Tara Linney was an article about using animation in the classroom. In the article, there was a list of ten reasons to use animation which were: 1) students relate to animated characters; 2) animated stories can teach empathy; 3) animations are a multi-sensory teaching tool; 4) animations help separate a child’s behavior from their person; 5) students imitate the character’s behavior; 6) animated stories are efficient ways to convey information; 7) animations are a way to hook the students; 8) stories create a shared viewing experience; 9) animations are a powerful social emotional learning platform; and 10) animations provide a 3-minute opportunity for a breather. I think that the most important reasons are the second, third, fifth, and ninth. The most interesting post I retweeted from EdTech K-12 Magazine was about the possibility of closing the K-12 digital divide by 2020. Although I do not think that this will become a reality, I am glad that it published an article addressing this issue. The last thing I have done on Twitter since last time was participate in a Twitter chat. This was also a first for me, so the experience was not really enriching. Although I posted a question on #edtechchat about closing the digital divide, no one replied to my tweet or poster anything addressing that topic on their own. This was disappointing because throughout the whole time I have been using Twitter, mostly every user just tweeted about implementing technology in the classroom instead of about providing adequate technology for low-income schools.