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Using Twitter For Classroom Activities

Our group decided on the idea of using Twitter as a means for introducing a new group of students at the beginning of a school year. On the first day of classes, the teacher would introduce the idea of making a Twitter and have the students create a Twitter account at home and upload a profile picture. The next day, the teacher will have the students sign onto Twitter and follow students in the class. Then each student will write a few short tweets about themselves and the tweets will be posted on a projector for the whole class to see. This will help the the teacher and the students learn more about each other.

The benefits of using Twitter will help the students' relationships and the teacher-students' relationships grow because they will get to know each other and learn more about each person. However, the constraints of using Twitter in the classroom may result in bad tweets about the students and help rumors be spread around. This would not be good, especially for the beginning of the school year.

Uses of Blogs in Education

The two blogs I looked at for good uses of Education are http://www.diaryproject.com/ and http://anne.teachesme.com/. Both of these blogs were used for educational purposes, but both are for different reasons. The Diary Project is for new students going to school who would like to talk about their nerves or worries about going to school. Also, it allows students to write their feelings about anything else on their mind because no one knows who the author is and it's a "diary", so students feel able to talk about their problems just as long as no one knows their identity. The second blog is called EduBlog Insights by a woman named Anne Davis. She communicates with other educators in the areas of education, so teachers can get useful ideas and help from the author.

The first blog is directed at younger students below 12th grade who want to publish personal things. There are barely any comments, so I think this is just a write and reflect blog. The blog connects with the audience because anyone can really join and write "diary entries" if they want to. The second blog is directed towards older adults who teach. Teachers are able to respond to blogs and even ask questions. This blog is more about reading and understanding to be well informed. This blog connects with the audience as well because it talks about issues related to education, and educations in turn discuss and give feedback.

When I am a teacher, I will use blogs help me stay up-to-date about current education issues and read stories from other teachers, possibly gaining information about teaching strategies as well. For the students though, I would use blogs for out-of-class discussions so the students can better reflect on stories the class reads or even just maintain journal entries that I can view and look at for grades (this works especially well for me because I want to become an English teacher).

Greetings!

Hey guys. This is my first blog, and hopefully not my last. I'm super excited to be writing on a blog and hopefully it is just as useful to you as it is to me. Thank you!