#edchat

#edchat experience

My first experience with an online Twitter chat was on January 26^th.  I tweeted out “ I am very interested in using e-readers in the classroom , which ones do you all recommend?”   My first few responses were from fellow candidates in the program.  Then I started getting a lot more from other people all over.  They would send me links to various sites to get more information about a particular e-reader or they would tell me the benefits of a particular reader.  For my first experience it was-interesting.  I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get the large response I was looking for.  I was also disappointed that I did not get the large variety of answers I was seeking.  It seemed the overwhelming response was for the iPad but there was no reason behind it other than it was the new, popular piece of technology out there.

On March 5th I engaged in 2 different #edchat Twitter conversations.  The first was regarding literacy.  A father asked for tips for his two sons on how to improve their literacy.  He stated that he had basically exhausted his attempts and was looking for new ideas.  Despite being in the program my biggest piece of advice to him was something he had heard many times and that was to continually read aloud and have the children read themselves.  My belief is that there is no substitute for reading and listening to someone read.

The second Twitter chat I engaged in on March 5^th ended up being very interesting, and something that I had a very strong opinion about.  A girl tweeted a question regarding a conversation she had with her sister.  Her sister stated, “she didn’t have time to learn on Twitter.”  Since the beginning of this semester and my introduction to Twitter I have continually expressed my distaste of the site.  I am not a Twitter fan and I find Twitter very frustrating.   Throughout the semester we learned many different ways to organize tweets and how to accurately search for certain topics on Twitter.  The benefits I am seeing now are that Tweets asking a question generally send you to a site, picture, or source to help answer the question and in this way it is beneficial.  The downside I see to Twitter is that it is if you are looking for a direct and precise answer from a person it is hard to narrow down many statements into 140 words; furthermore it is difficult at times to convey your own message or ask questions properly in 140 characters.  Also, to add to the girls tweet question, I think that, while Twitter has a large pool of people to attain information from, whether or not you get a reliable answer can be difficult to tell, also, gaining answers can depend holy on the time of day that you ask the question; asking at night might not garner many answers.  Though I can see the benefit for some people to use Twitter to learn from, it is not my style I will continue to gain my information using other resources.