Twitter and Me

Initially, I was nervous about using Twitter. I am not a big fan of social networks in the first place and I do not spend much time with them. In fact, the only account that I have outside of this class is Facebook and I am almost never on it. However, after participating in the online Twitter quiz in class today, I have found that using Twitter is actually very easy. Although Twitter can get confusing because of all of the people who Tweet, it is still a good method to use to communicate. After using the Tweet Deck program, I found it much easier to keep track of all of the different Tweets. My only problem was that I kept forgetting to place the hash tag in the message and I had to redo a few of my Tweets. Otherwise, it is a good collaboration tool.
I can see how Twitter could be useful in the classroom. Everyone in the class would be able to participate in answering a question instead of just calling on one or two people. If I decide to use Twitter in my classroom, I might require everyone to make a new Twitter because mixing an outside social life in with class discussion could be very distracting and the students might become too wrapped up in what their friends are Tweeting about and neglect to participate in class. Another problem I can see with this is that students might lose their face-to-face social skills if Twitter is used instead of verbal class discussion. As with everything, balance is key. Students need to learn how to use technology but they also need to know how to actually talk to people.