Journal #4: "Join the Flock" & "Enhance Your Twitter"

(NETS 3, 4, 5)




Ferguson, H. (2010). Join the Flock!. Learning & Leading with Technology, Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-leading/digitaledition/digital-edition-march-april-2013
McClintock Miller, S. (2010). Enhance your twitter experience. Learning & Leading with Technology, Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-leading/digitaledition/digital-edition-march-april-2013




Summary: This is a perfect article for people who are opposed to twitter and other online websites. Hadley Ferguson writes about how easy and helpful a twitter account can be. Twitter has a community of PLN where individuals around the world communicate about education. Their mission is to improve education and make it the best it can be. In order to be part of this PLN community is to create a twitter account. In your twitter account you must include a bio and a photo; this will give people an idea on who you are and what you are interested in. As soon as you get your profile started you can begin to follow people by simply searching for their name in the search box or search for a particular topic you are interested in. Twitter is not something where you have to participate in and be 24/7 but the amount of time you decide to spend on PLN is completely up to you. It is a good idea to set aside at least 10 minutes of your time everyday to get used to twitter and meet other people that are interested in education.However the more you tweet the more you will get people to follow you and vise versa. Another way to get more followers or to get people to notice you on twitter is to simply re-tweet what other people are saying. Twitter gives people the free opportunity to express yourself and build your own social network.


Question 1: What is PLN?
Answer 1: PLN is a group of people around the world that are learning together. They start out as strangers, but with the help of Twitter they become a community that is dedicated to make learning and education the best it can be.

"Enhance Your Twitter Experience"

Summary: In this article Shannon McClintock Miller gives the reader useful tips that can transform your teaching with the simple use of Twitter.  Through twitter she was able to get teachers from different places in the world to teach her class. For example she got Ruggero Domenichini, a teacher from New Zealand to teach her 7^th grade class about his 2.0 tool. Thanks to twitter Shannon McClintock Miller was also able to meet people in the ISTE 2010. McClintock Miller writes that twitter can be a good experience as long as you use a Twitter Organizer by adding TweetDeck which is a simply way to reply, retweet and reply to direct messages. Twitter is also easier if used with a Bookmarklet. Hootlet is a form one way to bookmark your tweets and share them with your friends. You have to have a good strategy while using twitter. 70% on your time on twitter should be spend sharing people’s voices or opinions while 20% should be responding to messages, collaborating, and connecting to others and 10% should be spend on your personal life. If you use the strategies given then your twitter experience would be much more fun and will help you build your own PLN!

Question 1: What is a Twitter Deck?

Answer 1: TweetDeck is a tool on twitter that is divided into columns. Tweets are divided by friends, mentors, direct messages, or any other search criteria in which you are interested in.