In the last little while, I have tried giving Twitter a shot. I started by building up a bit of a “network”, trying to follow as many education related resources I could think of, as well as my fellow #I4ED classmates. I believe this step has been the most crucial step to creating a good experience on Twitter for me, as the streams I have coming are really relevant to the purpose I have in mind for my Twitter account – namely education. I have had a personal Twitter account before, but I never really used it, and I suspect it is because I never really built myself a network of specific things to follow, so it was all just a cluster of randomness, that often ended up not really being of much interest to me. Well, that paired with the fact that I am not all that into Tweeting anything myself. This blog may be a good indicator of me having an incredibly hard time constraining myself to a measly 150 characters – it’s either all or nothing!
After roughly 6 weeks on Twitter, I can say that I am positively surprised by how much I have enjoyed it. I am still learning and getting the hang of it – I most certainly have days where I forget checking on Twitter and then get a bit lost in the feed – but overall, I think this is a valuable resource for me as a teacher. Simply by following other educators and educational resources, I have found myself actually learning, and this is not necessarily true of my time spent on other social media platforms. For example, I catch myself scrolling though my feed on Facebook or Instagram, and after 30min-1hour realize that I am wasting my time on things that don’t even really interest me, whereas I have customized my Twitter feed in such a way that scrolling through my feed there is actually beneficial to me personally, as well as academically.
Furthermore, Twitter is an excellent way of networking and connecting with other educators across not only the province, but also the country, continent, and globe – it all depends on how you build up your personal network and Twitter environment. In fact, my experience on Twitter is making me a little more thoughtful about how I can build myself better environments on my other social media platforms, and how valuable it is to engage in Educational communities to constantly learn and get new perspectives on educational topics. I tend to be a quite passive person, so I am still working up the courage to actually Tweet much and not just retweet other people’s content, but I feel like even passively following along is beneficial, and with time I hope to be more comfortable to also engage more myself.
TweetDeck
Unfortunately it took me a couple weeks to try out Titter’s web-based companion, TweetDeck, and I wish I had done it earlier, as it is an excellent way to keep your Twitter feed more organized and be able to have a couple “feeds” visible at the same time. I am not going to get into too much detail here, but it basically allows you to view your basic “home’ feed, simultaneously with other feeds you choose, arranged in separate columns (these could be messages, mentions, lists, etc.). This makes it really easy to multi-task on Twitter, and engage with live hashtags, like for example the #mbedchat. I will definitely recommend this for anybody who is enjoying Twitter, and wants to make it a more engaging experience.
Manitoba’s Ed Chat
Through the hashtag #mbedchat, Manitoba educators connect on Twitter every first and third Wednesday of each month between 8 and 9pm, responding to questions and prompts posted by the moderators. I had the pleasure of experiencing one of these moderated by Kirsten Thompson and Matteo Di Muro on January 20th, and it was a pleasure to follow along with the conversation on remote learning and teaching. Even though I am just a Student Teacher and was not able to share as many insights and contributions to the discussion as I’d hope, I still felt very welcome to the chat, and it didn’t feel weird or awkward at all – everybody was super kind, and I didn’t feel out of place or like I didn’t fit in at all. I was just able to enjoy the experience, which was wonderful.
Since I was pretty new to Twitter at the time, I feel like I was rather slow on responding to the prompts, while also making sure I was correctly following the hashtags and responding to the right people. It felt like the chat was moving along a lot faster than I was able to follow, but in a way I also think that was a part of the fun and it made the hour go by really fast! I will also mention that I had not tried TweetDeck at the time, so I am sure that would make the experience a tad less hectic, and I am looking forward to trying out the #mdedchat again as the opportunity arises. Actually, on Wednesday February 16th, Matteo Di Muro will be moderating again, this time with Tyler Letkeman. Both of these wonderful individuals have been guest speakers in our Internet for Educators class, so I am hoping to be able to join again and see what interesting topic will be discussed. The Manitoba Ed chat sure is an excellent way for educators to connect and learn from each other, so I thoroughly recommend for any of my #I4ED peers to join in, even to just observe.
Martina’s Marbles 