As an avid user of Twitter for the last 6 years, I figured this would integrate well for my PLN. Mostly I use twitter to follow celebrities and all of their drama. I have many other social media accounts that give me access to variety of different educational resources so I wasn't sure what to expect when using Twitter for the same purpose.
I created a new account and began searching for common educational accounts. I actually googled a list because I really didn't know what I was looking for. I tried to follow a variety of people, everyone from authors to news sites that I thought would be relevant. All in all I followed 17 different accounts. I tried to scroll all of their last 10 or so tweets to see if there was anything that sparked my eye, no such luck. I felt like a lot of what I was seeing was information geared toward elementary school teachers, but not much for high school and even less on Science. I tweeted out that I was looking for sources that would help me incorporate data analysis into my classes to help my students prepare for the ACT. I used some of the common hashtags I was seeing in hopes of getting a response or two. Unfortunately, I did not receive any feedback from the Twitterverse. I did search the hashtags #Scichat #APBio #APBiology #Biology #ScienceTeacher. Again, I really came up short. Most of the things under the Bio hashtags were memes or students complaining about it ruining their lives or they were links to new sites. Nothing was really education related. So that was a bummer.
However, I really needed some sources to create these data questions for class, so I went to another social media site, Reddit. Once there, I joined r/Scienceteachers and posted looking for the same information and within 3 hours, I had a link to a website (datanuggets.org) which is a website that takes scientific journal articles and makes them accessible to students. It was literally exactly what I was looking for. Not only that, but it's FREE. So in the future, I think I will keep my twitter account for trashy celebrity gossip and stick to Reddit for educational resources.
It sounds like you hit a bit of a roadblock with Twitter, but way to try something new and persevere and keep searching until you found what you were looking for Nicole.
ReplyDeleteI have always wondered if Twitter would be a valuable social network for educators. I've never had an account. Although you teach a different grade level and content area, your feedback related to your experience has given me some insight as to what to possibly expect when using it.
ReplyDeleteI found the same thing with Twitter. I was hopeful but didn't find much that I could follow. I have never heard of Reddit so thanks for the tip to try something new.
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of the techy people that I follow share resources, but many times it is just a link to a blog (which I probably already follow) I am really interested in checking out Reddit and possibly adding this to the list of challenges!
ReplyDelete