Twitter and Me

Yesterday, the class and I took a quiz via Twitter.  It was an interesting experience to say the least.  It was different than what most people are used to in their regular classrooms when taking quizzes.  At first it was a bit confusing, but once we started everyone started to get the hang of it.  

Before this class, I had a personal Twitter account, however, I never used it, ever.  Using Twitter in SEDU183 has definitely expanded my knowledge of the site.  I, personally, would prefer to not use Twitter a lot, only because it still confuses me, but I do enjoy getting to know how to use different technologies in the classroom.  Dr. Smith would tweet a question that he would like for us to answer, and everyone tweeted their two-cents.  After seeing everyone else's answers, my partners, Meg Dulion, Lindsey Downing, and I used Facebook to communicate to each other what we wanted to write down officially on our quiz documents. It was a lot of fun using the different social networking websites to take a quiz.  Here is what went on during our Twitter quiz-time.  

Although Twitter seems to be permanently linked to being only for personal, and social uses, I do not believe that to be entirely true.  I feel that teachers could use Twitter, and maybe other social medias, to help their students learn the content subject as well as how to use technology inside and outside of the classroom.  We must utilize the new technology that have been presented to us to our advantage and teach/prepare our students for the future where technology is forever changing.

The Final Frontier

The past couple of classes, Meg Dulion, Lindsey Downing and I collaborated together to come up with a presentation geared towards teachers who are not sure whether they want to incorporate technology into their classrooms.  I enjoyed working with these two ladies because we all fed off of each other's ideas, and got the presentation done in a orderly fashion.  Using Google Drive was a great experience because it allowed us to use new technology (at least, for me it was) and work with new people.

By reading the article, "Teacher Pedagogical Beliefs: The Final Frontier in Our Quest for Technology Integration", we gathered enough information about how teachers really feel about new technology.  According to Becker, the author of the article, there are four reasons why computer integration is seen as valuable and successful and are as follows: (1) teachers "have convenient access", (2) teachers "are adequately prepared", (3) teachers "have some freedom in the curriculum", and (4) teachers "hold personal beliefs aligned with a constructivist pedagogy" when they have direct computer and other technology accesses.