A new view on Twitter

Over the past two weeks, I have came out of “Twitter Hibernation”. I created my twitter account back in 2010 during my undergrad degree. Since then, I would open the app once a week to check out my celebrity “friends”, check out my school division and school’s feed and then log out after 15 minutes.  I have always felt comfortable navigating around the website and app. I understand how to mention others, how to use and search hashtags and I understood the concept of live twitter chats.  I just never felt very comfortable putting myself out there to the large audience.

This class has forced me to come out of my shell and become more comfortable with tweeting instead of just lurking on others posts.  I am happy to report that it only took one night of a live twitter chat for me to feel a lot more comfortable with the the world of Twitter! On Wednesday night I took part in my first live twitter chat, it was also my school division’s first live chat. The topic of this chat was classroom libraries.  I was nervous with my first tweet but quickly realized that no one was judging my answers but instead they were happy to see myself and others getting involved!  I admit, my confidence grew when I gained some likes and retweets by various members of my school division, this encouraged me to keep going and answer more questions in the chat. #instantgratification    I really do look forward to the next month’s twitter chat on differentiated instruction. I will be sure to take part in another chat before then though.

I look forward to continue learning and experiencing first hand about how great of a tool twitter can be as an educator.  I hope to continue to grow my professional learning network and learn to collaborate from other primary teachers around the world.  I found this great link recently that lists 50 Ways to use Twitter in the classroom.

My goals over the next few months will be to actively tweet at least three times a week, engage in various edchats and to use twitter to collaborate with other primary teachers for new ideas. Wish me luck!

Happy tweeting!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: mkhmarketing via Compfight cc

Introduction to Final Project

I was very happy with the flexibility for our final project in this class.  I was quite certain from day 1 that I wanted to use my major project to benefit my Grade 2 students.  I debated whether I would create a class facebook or instagram account, as I thought my students parent’s might appreciate this. I reflected upon my communication with my parents and decided I do a pretty good job updating my families with a weekly newsletter, frequent email updates and emailing pictures of their children learning that I thought I should choose something else besides these two social media sites.  I decided I would like to involve my students and get them active online so I have decided to start a class blog using Edublog.

I hope to use this classroom blog as a place to share our learning as a group, but I will also have my student blog individually through this site.  My goal will also be to connect with another primary classroom and set up our students as “blogging buddies”. I think my students will love knowing that they are not only posting for their teacher and parents, but that they are posting for a larger audience as well.

My first steps in this project will be to set up the blog and inform my students parents. I need to do more research about what I can post in regards to names and pictures. I think I have a good idea of how to keep my students identity safe, but I will do the research to double check.

I look forward to this experience and I will be reflecting upon my experiences with this class blog weekly!

Entering a new territory

My name is Danielle Gossard. I am a Grade 2 teacher in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and am currently working towards my master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction.

I am currently about two weeks into my second course in my program. I will be using this blog to reflect upon my learnings in my course “Social Media and Open Education” but I also hope to expand this blog into a useful platform for my online identity.  Overtime, I hope to add my philosophy of education and teaching resume to this site as well.

I am very excited to learn online using the Zoom tool. I usually prefer to take classes in person at the university because I really value face to face conversations with colleagues but I think we will have a lot of opportunity to have “face to face” conversations with other learners in this class.

I feel like I am “entering a new digital territory” with this blog and this class because I am usually rather quiet in the social media world.  I use instagram most frequently, but honestly because my instagram has the smallest audience.  I think very closely about what I share on Facebook and I only tweet a few times a year… times will be changing!  I am excited to explore the new world of being more “outgoing” in the digital world!

Photo Credit: LUCIANDUMA via Compfight cc