Week 7

Throughout this eight week course I have had many "first" time experiences. The one experience that I see myself continuing professionally is Twitter. I have had a Twitter account for over a year, but have been inactive. It has been nice to have "Twitter Assignments" to force me to become more familiar with Twitter.

I contributed to my first Twitter Chat. The chat experience was neat, for the fact that I was instantly interacting with educators across the country/world from the comfort of my living room, and the cost: FREE. I have to say that Twitter has opened my eyes to a new world. I still have a hard time knowing how to search for things, but with time I think I will get that figured out.

I created my first Twitter Hashtag for my parents. Seven weeks ago, I had no clue what a "hashtag" was, I am not an expert yet but I do know I have one to share with parents! I have posted a few reminders for parents, I am not sure they are fully aware. However, I have the information posted in my weekly newsletter asking them to follow #MeurerNews.

My biggest accomplishment, as you are probably tired of hearing about, is Tweeting in my classroom through Twiducate. Just when I thought "my students" were too young- they are LOVING IT! They are typing and to them that is NOT the same as writing. They are getting more comfortable with the use, so I am ready to "up" my expectations. But all in all, this 8 weeks has been very rewarding to me professionally!

I definitely see myself Tweeting in and out of the classroom in the upcoming years!

Twitter Chat #2ndchat Wednesday Night

Well... if I can remember- I think I just found my new Wednesday night assignment! I have a list of at least four resources I want to look into. 1) Cybershape Quest 2) screenchomp.com 3) Chromville 4) Mad Libs app

I think Twitter Chat is something that you have to do maybe two, three times before you can say you are "great at it". I definitely and thankful I was at my computer for it!! Neat to network instantly with teachers of the same grade level but states away. Pretty impressive. The things I saw tonight were pretty neat. Something I didn't mention, but have heard of before, is kidblog.org. Here I think Twiducate is something to brag about- looks like that would be an awesome tool to look into as well. Kids blogging, that sounds very real life for our students of 2014!

All-in-all... I plan to go back to #2ndchat! Glad we had this assignment, it pushed me out of my "comfort zone" with Twitter!

I have included a screenshot of my chat, as I thought it was part of our requirement. I have to say I started out in just Chrome at Twitter... the someone recommended to someone else to use TweetChat, and I took their advice. However, it didn't seem to stay refreshed as quick as Twitter.com. Anyways- good luck!!