Journal 2: "Join the Flock" and "Enhance your Twitter Experience" (NETS II - IV)

Ferguson, H. (2010). Join the flock!. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37(8), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/Leading_and_Learning_Docs/June_July_2010_Join_the_Flock.sflb.ashx

Miller, S.M. (2010). Enhance your twitter experience. Leading and Learning With Technology, 37(8), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Libraries/Leading_and_Learning_Docs/June_July_2010_Join_the_Flock.sflb.ashx

In the article "Join the Flock" by Hadley Ferguson, it explains the world of twitter. It brings strangers from all places together to collaborate and share their ideas. Twitter is easy to access and participate in, and it's free! People can find people to follow like celebrities, favorite athletes, teachers, and many more. You can make different twitter accounts to separate from personal to business. If interesting articles appear you can copy the link and send it to others. Twitter can be very helpful in finding information and facts about your career. Just like facebook, twitter can be very addictive and time consuming, but you are able to learn new information and meet new people so it is well worth the time! In the second article "Enhance your Twitter Experience" by Shannon McClintock Miller, it mentions the benefits of joining twitter to enhance teacher collaboration. Teachers can connect together and learn from each others teaching experiences. Teachers can also share their favorite book or article and bookmark the sites they think are most interesting. For the most part twitter is safe and provides options for privacy settings. 

Q #1: Do you think twitter would be useful to integrate in a schools curriculum?

I think in general twitter is useful to communicate and collaborate with people, but would not be beneficial for students in a classroom. Blogging is a much better learning technique than twitter for the students. Although students are able to communicate, twitter is more helpful for adults in finding articles for teaching. I think there are several other tools that would be more practical to integrate in a schools curriculum than twitter. 

Q #2: Are there any risks to making an account for Twitter? 

For the most part twitter is safe, but there are certain risks if you don't take precautions. It is important to make your twitter account private and not post any revealing information that someone could take advantage of.