My First Twitter Experience

My first experience chatting on twitter was a bit overwhelming. I was extremely nervous about accidentally posting an uninformed comment for all to see.  I found myself looking for a friendly face and found one in Craig Kemp at #whatisschool. When I followed him he immediately welcomed me with a personal message! On his twitter feed (?) I found two very helpful items. One was a user-friendly introduction to twitter:

http://mrkempnz.com/2015/02/5-tips-for-managing-a-fast-paced-twitter-chat.html?utm_content=bufferea921&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The other told about a collaborative learning project called Mystery Skype. You partner with a mystery classroom and compete with each other (using yes/no questions) to figure out each other’s location. This project incorporates many ELL checklist items.  When you go to the site, they have a great video that provides a sense of this project. I’d love to find a way to fit this in at the end of the school year.

http://mrkempnz.com/2014/11/what-is-mystery-skype-8-steps-to-get-started.html

This twitter experience and my experience incorporating new apps and learning activities in my classroom make it apparent that teachers have a responsibility to keep up with technology and continually find new ways to use it in instruction and learning.  I’m also appreciating how time-consuming and challenging this task is. 

As much as I’ve enjoyed learning about new apps and starting to implement them in instruction and learning; I’ve been frustrated at how long it takes me to understand them deeply enough to include them in our lessons.  I don’t want to be tripping over technology while I get the students up and running.  However, I don’t always have a deep enough understanding of the technology to anticipate all the “bumps in the road” before instructing.

So…some of the many questions rolling around in my head are:

How will teachers who don’t have the benefit of professional development (like this course) and opportunities to collaborate with other teachers keep up?  How will curriculum and professional development change to make teachers more effective and competent in technology integration? How can we leverage technology integration ideas by grade-level or subject matter so teachers aren’t reinventing the wheel?