In my quest to explore social networking I created a Facebook page which may, eventually, be used for my profession. I am pretty familiar with Facebook, so I focused more on Twitter. I do not tweet and am not a Twitter follower, but I wanted to find out more information about it. I am now more familiar with Twitter and even know what all the # signs mean after reading up on it.
Twitter seems like a wonderful tool for businesses or well-known individuals. It gives its users the ability to broadcast their latest news and blog postings in short messages. Businesses can tweet about their latest ventures and reach a wide range of audience members. It can also be good for individuals that like to send out daily messages for others to read. If I did sign-up for Twitter I would probably look for inspirational Tweets to help get me through the day. As a teacher, however, I'm not sure that I would find Twitter very useful. I certainly would not be tweeting information. Perhaps I could follow other teacher's tweets, but I can follow other teachers without Twitter.
The bottom line, for me, is that I am not comfortable with Twitter. I don't want to Tweet information in 140 words or less. I don't want to be bombarded with Tweets from others who wish to tell me that they are now at Starbucks indulging in a Peppermint Mocha. In some ways I agree with the group of individuals who feel that there is too much useless information on the net. Tweeting, to me, is just adding to that pool. Sure, there are people who Tweet useful information, but there seems to be a lot more who don't. That's my opinion, anyway. Right now I am perfectly happy with Facebook and see no Tweeting in my future.
I don't know if I see a classroom application with these websites. The first consideration is, do the students have access to technological devices in order to even create a social networking account. After that, there are concerns with whether or not the parents wish to allow their children to even have an account.
Let's just say that the students have access through in-class laptops and that the social network used is exclusive to the school, which helps the parents agree to having their child create an account. What would it be used for in class? One could argue that it could be used to discuss assignments and projects, but it seems to me that there are other options for that. The one way that I could see it being used is to teach students how to use social networking. For instance, what they should and should not post, how to monitor their friend selection, and so forth.
It is important for educators to know how social networking works so that they can be aware of the issues that arise with it, and also so that they may utilize it in a positive way. Social networking is a powerful tool and needs to be thought of carefully before using it for classroom instruction.
With that I leave you with your Tweets and FB friends, reminding you to be mindful of your social networking messages.
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