Week Report & Reflection #5

This week I have became more accustom to using Feedly and Diigo, which are both incredible ways for me to access a ton of knowledge in an efficient manner. Adding more tools to my quickly growing arsenal, we were able to add one this week that many of my fellow students and myself are already accustomed to. So, this week we got into Twitter. 

 

Twitter Logo. (2012) Retrieved from https://g.twimg.com/Twitter_logo_blue.png

 As we probably all knew in advance Twitter is an online social network/messaging forum, which allows people worldwide to connect instantly on similar topics. This web 2.0 tool is created by us for us. The content in twitter is largely people’s thoughts, and feelings about any subject. There are so many amazing things about twitter:

- Easy and free to sign up, easy to use.

- Comments that are short and sweet (140 characters).

- Ability to search for likeminded individuals/tweets through hashtags

- Twitter recommends people for you based on people you are already following

These are the main reasons why Twitter is my favourite tool used so far in ADED 1P32.

Getting back on Twitter for me, was extremely easy to do across both my laptop and cellphone, one of my favourite things about twitter is how easy it is for me to keep two accounts active at one time.  The click of a button allows me to switch from my scholarly twitter back to my more social account.  My work account, and my play account. My personal learning network, and my personal network.  In my exploration of Twitter I quickly realized that many people have the same type of accounts. In my previous experience with Twitter I have mostly came across the social accounts, with jokes, photos of food, inappropriate comments (poor digital etiquette) which may be the reason why I don’t use Twitter on a daily basis. Through this exploration of Twitter however, I have come to find a much more educated group creating a more successful personal learning network. With like minded people who are committed to leaving behind a better digital footprint, who know what it means to be a good digital citizen. 

Twitter will be useful in educational activities not only because as the Twitter Handbook for Teachers states you can leverage your PLN with hastags, but also because it allows me to get up to the second notifications of people are looking to contact me. This will be useful when completing the next sessions group assignments. As most people constantly have their cellphones within reach Twitter is just an instant messaging system that allows me to contact my group members instantly. This means if anyone finds something relating to a topic of research it can be utilized instantly by all members of the group allowing us to build knowledge quickly and efficiently. 

Reconnecting with Twitter and modifying it to achieve academic learning has already changed my PLE. In the future with the more followers that I can accumulate it will only become a better tool in my collection. The final question this week was what are you learning about becoming a digital citizen?  I have come to realize that by surrounding myself with better people (a better PLN) in the digital world, similar to our daily lives, creates a better environment fostering better results.

This week I have found this relevant webpage from my feedly, which is all about the trust that we need to have while using new technology. I was very interested in this webpage because it talks about how we all need to trust technology to create a better learning environment, while getting more tech into the classroom.