Why Twitter?

In response to the article "A teacher's guide to Twitter", by Edudemic, and presentation "A Twitter-Tastic Teachers Guide", by Wabisabi, I ultimately feel that there would be many more pros then cons in incorporating relevant social media, with teaching and educational engagement purposes.

A few reasons include the development of social communication within the students as well as the teachers, convenience in passing information along from one student to the next, access to updated and relevant worldly news and opportunity to a new way of creativity of actually school or classwork. 

For social engagement, in participating in a Twitter styled blog or student group, students would have a interesting way of communication with each other and teachers, outside of the classroom. It allows, once again a new creative outlook to do what any other standard blog, email or group discussion would require, but could be way more sufficient, because at least 50% of the students may already have accounts or are active, on Twitter.

Secondly, Twitter could help with convenience in passing information between a class of students. This could help eliminate having to send emails, that a lot of people don't check enough, or the concerns of crossing thin lines between calling and texting other students and teachers at certain times. Since twitter is public, everyone can use it, respond to each other, in appropriate manner of course, and anyone can respond to it, at the time the receive a tweet or post.

Thirdly, anything similar to Twitter, have access to updated and relevant worldly news, which is great for any assignment, such as a weekly discussion post. Information from science to politics to celebrity gossip can all be obtained, and it'll only be convenient to have the same site where student can submit information as well as to discuss maybe opinion on these topics, which goals back to the communication benefit.

Lastly, using Twitter allows students to engage in a creative way of learning and communicating, which ultimately will make anyone want to learn more. Things can become repetitive, which become boring which causes student to lose interest in learning, so its important to provide new ways to teach.

Though these pro are extremely beneficial in incorporating in a educational environment, I do feel certain measures should be explained and observed. Social media can be helpful, but can cause issues when abused. As a teacher, you want to make sure there is a a healthy balance of technology use in the classroom, because you wouldn't want to loss the effectiveness of how technology assists, especially working with smaller children, with students becoming to tech dependent. This could cause your student to lose social skills in the classroom or if student have access to other programs on their devices, the could misuse the equipment for things that aren't school related.With great observation and planning though, this can be a very beneficial way to set up a lesson plan or curriculum.  



                                                             TAKE AWAY  9/17/18

  There are are many programs that can be easily accessed and used online for different age ranges of students. For example, a great website for Pre-K through 3rd Grade is PBS Kids. Its a fun website that has hundreds of games that include everything these age groups are learning about, from shapes, colors, spelling, pronunciation, counting and even time management, overall focusing on the development of children's cognitive, social, cognative and emotional functions. Teachers can use different games for different subjects a lesson, saving and copying links to where the students can access that particular game, allowing for a fun and exciting way to motivate your children to learn. For example, a game for counting on the website is called "Pegs Pizza Place". The objective of the game is to count and add the correct amount of toppings to the pizza for each customer. The graphics are not to simple but not to bright and distracting, which I feel is important for younger children to keep focus. Again, plenty of more games for different focuses, free of charge, with only the need of internet access.