Thing #18 As explored by me...

Mhmmm... Twitter and Facebook!

Two of my favrite pages! This is a link to my Twitter. If you want to follow me please sent me a request, and the same thing with friending on Facebook. This is the link to my Facebook. Both of them are set to private, so you can't just creep on me, but you can become my friend or follower!

Educators need to know about, and be active on social networking sites. Through the knowledge base of having full access to these social networking sites they can know what to expect to their students to be talking about. For instance, when I was in middle school I knew more about what was going on in the social world versus the political world and situations. For instance, I follow the History Channel and everyday I get multiple tweets sent to my phone to let me know what happened on this date in history! Very nifty :), by the way, this day in 1931 "The Star-Spangled Banner" became official!

Also, teachers can use Twitter (monitored, and approved before class) as a conversation start for classes such as Social Studies, or Literature it it has to do with books or media. Facebook could be utilized through groups for the class. There can be a groups for my class. One group could be for the parents in order to keep them up to date on classroom happenings. There could be a group for my students to dicuss classroom material and ask each other questions. Finally, there could be a group for fellow teachers who teach similar things in order to help each other come up with new and engaging teaching ideas!

I love both sites, but it depends on what I am wanting to accomplish as to which one I choose to use. I use Facebook more to connect with people, and keep people in the "loop" of my life and what is going on. Twitter is more for finding information out. I have a great group of followers who strive to answer questions and respond to my tweets when they know I am trying to specifically find something. I will continue to use both of these for quite sometime, for personal and teaching purposes!