Social Media for Educators

Most Useful Tool

• Twitter• Able to connect to many

different education groups

• Able to share ideas quickly and easily

• Able to share websites and pictures

• Able to grow list of followers quickly and easily

Other Useful Tools

• Diigo• Able to collect bookmarks

and use them from ANY computer

• Able to use bookmarked sites from others – very useful!

• Able to search by key words, making the correct sites easy to find

Other Useful Tools

• Tinyurl• Able to condense websites to

share; especially helpful with Twitter

Successes

• New technology learned• Twitter – followed current events in education and beyond

• LinkedIn – updated my work history; hoping to make contacts in the education field to further opportunities

• Prezi – made presentations more interesting; student response was very positive, and they asked when they’d have another presentation like that posted on the Google classroom.

Successes

• Not-so-new technology• Pintrest – Found ideas related to teaching in general as well as

teaching writing and reading specifically; classroom organization ideas and procedures can be implemented now or at the beginning of a new semester/marking period.

Challenges

• Twitter• Keeping my updates to 140 characters was extremely difficult for

me; I’m a wordy person by nature! However, it was fun to challenge myself to be more concise.

• At first, I felt like I needed to keep up with every new update or notification; eventually, realized this was unrealistic.

• LinkedIn• Finding connections was a challenge; I was limited to requesting

people I knew personally.

Moodle and Online Learning

• I enjoyed the way I could work on the class when it fit my schedule.

• I liked how I could go back and re-read information, review concepts, and see videos as many times as I needed.

• I liked the quick turn around time for grading the work turned in; it was almost instantaneous!

My Collection of Work

Final Thoughts

• In today’s world, students have more information than ever at their fingertips. It is the teacher’s responsibility to become familiar with the available technology and use it to best reach each child. I am by no means an expert in this field, but I do feel like I have a much clearer understanding of the resources available, and I’m ready to integrate them into my practice.