The Twitter Life

Explorations of a Reluctant Twitter Newbie

I am not at all afraid to admit that Twitter is one of the social media platforms I have actively avoided in the last few years. While people around me spoke of the latest people they were following on Twitter, my general response was "meh." In 2013 I created my first Twitter account after joining Teach for America.

A quick Twitter search of "TFA RGV" quickly brought up the Twitter account for my TFA corps. I'm fairly positive I followed this account back in the day. For the life of me, no matter how hard I try, I can not remember my original Twitter username. Perhaps I should just blame this on getting older.

Since I did have an account in 2013, perhaps it's inappropriate to consider myself a Twitter newbie. Even in the scant amount of time since I last used the platform, the functionality seems to have greatly increased.

One of my favorite new tools to use with Twitter is Hootsuite. With Hootsuite I can control not just one Twitter account, but several. This could be really useful if I want to send out the same message to several different accounts. You'll see my Twitter handle on the image above as @TechieAlly.

From the image above, you can see that Hootsuite can connect Twitter with Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, WordPress, Instagram, and Youtube.

I think in a classroom context, I would be most intrigued to connect Twitter with a classroom Instagram, Youtube, or Facebook page. Since so many students have access to cell phones these days, it could provide a quick way to get a message out. Additionally, we can use these connections to keep parents informed about what is going on in the classroom. I also explored the Tweet Deck platform this week.

One area of concern in anything to do with social media is student privacy. I don't believe that a teacher should use a personal account to interact with students online.

One Twitter project that I would love to implement is a novel or character study. When reading a class novel, I would have each of the students choose a character to portray from the novel. Then they would have to create Twitter personas to interact with each other. I got this idea from the web series "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" which aired on Youtube and Twitter.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a modern take on the classic story of Pride and Prejudice. The show aired on Youtube as a web series. While the show was airing, each of the characters had Twitter accounts. In between episodes, the characters would tweet to each other. Even after the show finished airing, the creators of the show would still have the characters tweet every so often. This is without a doubt, my favorite use of Twitter in the past!

Now in 2017, most of the time when I hear people talking about Twitter, they are talking about what the President has posted, who dissed who, who can't spell, etc. As teachers I think we have to use our Twittering to set an example for our students. Twitter can be a lot of fun, but it can't also be a source of bullying for students.

Personally, I don't see Twitter being used in class at my current school, because it is blocked. It would be interesting to use it as an outside of class activity, but though most students have cell phones, not everyone has access to a smart phone or the internet outside of school. I like the idea of back channeling, but I think I would find this distracting in a classroom. I'd love to participate in a professional development session.

My Tweets for the Week

After signing up for Twitter, HootSuite was my first stop!

Next I went to check out TweetDeck. I thought it had an easy interface.

I decided to try adding a link. This link goes to the Padagogy Wheel, a tool for evaluating apps.

A fellow classmate recommended that I check out the chat capabilities on TweetDeck. I completely forgot that I'd already checked out the program when I sent this tweet!

Learning how to retweet another classmates image.

I'm planning to evaluate a website called Storybird for next week's technology evaluation project.

At this point I finally realized I'd already looked at TweetDeck! ^^

Attempting to reply to a classmate's post about another resource for the class.

The deepest thought in life...is there still time for donuts?

A reply to our instructor regarding an article linked.

Overall, I had fun exploring Twitter this week. Will I manage to use it longer than I did last time? I guess that is to be determined! I'm hoping to find some interesting organizations to follow online that will help me both personally and professionally.

Right now many of the apps on my phone allow duel sharing with Twitter. Since these are my personal accounts, I've decided to create yet another Twitter account to test out the interconnectivity of these apps in the future! I'm most curious about the possibilities of connecting Twitter with Instagram.