I am doing a study with Dr. Christopher Parrish from the
University of South Alabama on the use of the #MTBoS community with preservice
teachers. So, I asked my students to get
a Twitter account if they didn’t already have one and they have had a couple of
assignments with Twitter. The first one
was to follow 10 math people on Twitter and share why they chose to follow
them. The second one was to observe a
Twitter Chat. I didn’t want to force
them to participate in one as I felt it would be too intimidating. However, I thought following along with one
would expose them to what a Twitter chat was like, without the pressure of
participation.
Throughout this semester, I have sensed the skepticism of
my students of Twitter being helpful to them as a future teacher. However, after they completed their
reflections on the Twitter chat, I feel hopeful that they may actually see the
potential of Twitter. Here are some
comments from their reflections that stood out to me:
I
think it is unique, fun, and interesting that teachers from all over the
country hop onto Twitter and chat together! I think that it would be fun to
answer questions about this, but more fun to debate with people on why they
answered the topic question. I like debating. Don’t get this mixed up with arguing.
I like seeing different sides. I would consider myself an easy-going, open
minded individual. I think that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and
that is what I think the
beauty
is in Twitter.
I love that the
ED chat is based off of a hashtag so that I can look back at some of these teaching
techniques after the chat is over and take notes on what I want to use in the
future for my own classroom. Also, following along with an ED chat really
opened my eyes to how useful twitter can be to me in my own classroom. We had
so many chats to choose from for this assignment and it has helped me realize
that I constantly can ask for help from the many math teachers in the world of Twitter.
I had no idea
things like this existed; and I think they are such a beneficial way to learn
about topics you might not know much about.
You can also see what opinions other teachers have out there. Lastly, I think it is a great way to share
resources one might have found and has found useful. Twitter chats are really beneficial, and in
the future I definitely would like to read more.
My first and biggest reflection was that I
am completely overwhelmed by it. I did choose one of the more popular chats so
I assume this would be subject to change based on the chat. My next emotion
that comes to my mind is surprise. I was honestly surprised at the participation
level across the nation. This brings me to my final emotion, happiness. Knowing
that there are so many resources out there that are willing to be shared by so
many is such a great resource for me as a future teacher.
But the best part of this week
was that two of my students actually tweeted at me and included the class
hashtag, #Math261. These tweets are below.
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