TRANSCRIPT
@CI350class
A lot of Harold Blancos tweets were about using technology in the classroom. I believe that using technology in the classroom is great. I think everything that we were assigned to do in Blancos class would become very helpful in the classroom. Using facebook and twitter in the classroom is a great way to get students to engage in a discussion. This is also a great way for teachers to keep in contact with students outside of the classroom or vice versa. I also think using blogs in the classroom is a great way for students to engage in a discussion or get there opinion out about anything. Other students could give feedback to their classmates whether it is agreeing or disagreeing with what has been said or just giving some type of feedback. I really enjoy following @CI350class tweets because they continue to give me great ideas on using technology in my future classroom.
@gcouros
George Couros is a Division Principal for Parkland School Division. He is also an innovative teaching, learning, and leadership consultant. A lot of his tweets are focused toward how we as teachers or future teachers can inspire children to follow their passions. One tweet that really stood out to me was December 6 “An important question: would you want to spend the whole day learning in your own classroom?” This is definitely one question that should drive teachers to careful lesson planning and inspire the teacher to inspire the children to learn and encourage them to use what they have learned in the real world. I really enjoyed following @gcouros, his tweets were very mind opening and inspiring.
@kylepace
While following @kylepace I noticed that a lot of what he tweeted a things we learned about in this class. Kyle had a lot of tweets that were creative ways to using technology in the classroom. For example he talks about the use of twitter in the classroom, many different activities to be done with an ipad, teaching with youtube and so much more. One site that were in most of @kylepace’s tweets was a familiar site that we used while doing our 21st century pillars, Edutopia.org. There are so many different insights that this site shows. One thing I really liked about @kylepace was that he gave everyone that tweeted him with a question or concern or even their insight on something he recently tweeted he would always reply back. Kyle gave many ways to incorporate technology into the classroom for not only the students or teachers use, but the parents too.
@web20classroom
Steven W. Anderson is an educator, speaker and a blogger. Throughout his tweets he shares his blog posts, and they are very interesting to read. His tweets are really motivating for anyone that follows him, motivating them to just strive for the best and be awesome at what you’re doing. He often posts things about the importance of engaging students to be advocates of their own learning. He as well as most think it is important to get parents involved in your classroom. One tweet I found interesting was “Twitter in the Elementary classroom”. When I clicked on the link it took me to a page written by Steven about how to incorporate twitter in the elementary classroom. As most know the policy of twitter is you have to be 13 years of age to create a twitter account so that eliminates elementary school students from having a twitted account. But, what Steven realized as he traveled from classroom to classroom was something called paper tweets. Students posted what they were learning in roughly 140 characters as a way to summarize their learning after class each day using @ symbols and hashtags and by doing this children now know the way twitter works. Therefore when it comes time for these students to actually use it they will already be familiar with the way it works. I found this so interesting and such an awesome way to integrate twitter into the younger classrooms.
@tomaltepeter
Tom Altepeter shares many things through twitter and one tweet I found interesting was when you force kids to continue something. This tweet took me to a link that talked about a kid that didn’t want to play the piano anymore and he begs his parents to let him stop. But they do not because this is what he chose to do and his dad knows the over time he will fall in love with this. The next day his child is worried that he will suck at soccer, and is now turning back saying that he doesn’t want to try it anymore. But, as before the father says no to the boy asking to stay home because he knows that this is what he chose to do. The last sentences really stayed with me “if it’s always about freedom and choice and following desires in the moment, my kids will miss out on things that take time and dedication.” I am really glad that Tom decided to share this article with us because it gives me motivation as a future teacher to encourage students to stick with something they have wanted to do through the hard times and to never give up.