Wiki

Here's our wiki link. I HOPE it works, this was a little confusing for me. I hope I used the right wiki site (googledocs).

Have Fun & Go Bills!

Twitter V. Pownce

So, I'm a Facebook kind of gal. I use that to keep in contact with my friends and see what everyone is up to. I honestly check that a few times a day but had to keep reminding myself to check Twitter & Pownce. I think that if more of my friends were on either of these, I would check them more. When I realized this, I think that it is because of this fact that these could be useful classroom tools. Most of my students now are on MySpace or Facebook. Before this class, I'd never even heard of the idea of "microblogging" or any of these sites. Since they do seem to be relatively unknown, it would be useful to me as a teacher. I could post a question and have the students respond to me. Since Pownce allows you to only send messages to people who are your "friends," I can kind of filter out the nonsense and so could my students. Pownce also allows you to post links and audio, which would be essential to using this with my students. I could have them listen to something or watch a video, which they would not be able to do with Twitter. However, I do like that Twitter limits posts to 140 words. This leaves room for students to only have to write so much on a topic. You don't have to say "5 sentences at least," and they wouldn't feel intimidated by students who wrote 10 paragraphs when they only wrote one. They also would probably focus a little better because I wouldn't be able to post complicated questions, since I'm limited as well. They'd also have to learn how to get what they want to say down to only a few words. As a teacher, Pownce would be useful because I could group up my students and send them all a messge at once. Twitter doesn't let you to that. I would have to play with it a lot, and I'm sure encounter a lot of trial and error, before it would have my full confidence and I would believe in it enough to introduce it to my students. There are so many regulations with internet use, and blocked sites, and just plain weird people out there, that I could not take the chance until I knew the site backwards, forwards, and upside down. I know that Twitter has a privacy setting and Pownce probably does too. Although, I'm sure that my students could figure it out easier than I could! What's more, they might be able to change that setting without my knowledge. I think that these would be useful, as soon as I tweak everything!

Teachers Using Microblogging

I looked at this article:

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/how-microblogging-can-help-you/

I think that I'd use Microblogging as a get-to-know you tool at the beginning of the year. I'd have students create profiles and post things about themselves: interests, likes, dislikes etc. Then I'd have the students go on during class and check out each others' sites. I'd also try and create some games or activities that would ensure that the students were reading each others' blogs, like 3 lies, 1 truth, and the students have to guess which one is the truth about their classmate. I do worry about things like cyber-bullying or the blog being infiltrated by people that aren't part of the class, but I'm sure as I became more familiar with the site I'd be able to figure that out.