I am fairly
new to Twitter so I wanted to investigate what it was all about. My best option was to google it. I found a wealth of information, but the site
I found most useful was Mashable.com.
Mashable describes
it as a platform wherein
users share their thoughts, news, information and jokes in 140 characters of
text or less. Twitter makes global communication cheap and measurable. Profiles
are (usually) public — anyone in the world can see what you write, unless you
elect to make your profile private. Users "follow" each other in
order to keep tabs on and converse with specific people.
According to
Mashable, Twitter has its own language or jargon. Words to keep in mind are Tweet, hashtags,
feed, handle and mention@. Each term has
a specific function to either locate a person, share a tweet or post
updates.
Once I was
able to get some of the jargon down, I was then able to start searching. Twitter was filled with a plethora of
informational material compared to Facebook.
Each ed tech leader I followed had a unique way of relaying information. Some used videos, articles, and literature. For example, I clicked on Kathy Shrock’s tweet
about how to use old three ring binders to make a computer cable holder. She also shared great technology gadgets like
portable conference speakers and cameras.
Linda Braun retweeted an article titled “The 7 most important stem
skills we should be teaching our kids”.
This article describes the 7 skills and introduced a unique way authors
are using books to encourage children to start learning about computer literacy,
algorithms, reading binary numbers and sequence codes. I also located a tweet about Hooked app which
is getting teens reading on their phones.
The app contains fictional stories written in text format, like a text
message between to people. I shared this
app with my niece and she loved it. She
is usually not interested in reading but this app allowed her to become part of
the story. Twitter has opened a new world
to me and I plan on investigating every part of it.
