The very first account I followed was @CI350class, which is handled by Dr. Blanco. The same day that I followed this account, I immediately saw many different informative articles being shared in my timeline that all dealt with education in some capacity. For example, on March 4, Dr. Blanco tweeted a link to an article that illustrated how a comedian taught “storytelling basics.” This was a convenient way to show the class a fun way to teach to our future students, while using a social media application that almost all students have. Also, thanks to this twitter account, I was informed that our arts & bots videos were uploaded on the class Facebook page. I personally don’t check twitter as frequently as some of my peers, but I still think the concept of using Twitter for educational purposes is very neat and proves to be incredibly useful in the classroom. I genuinely never considered using Twitter as tool when I become a teacher, but now I am revaluating how I feel about social media in the classroom.

The next account I followed was @WISEinWV. This account is all about sex education in West Virginia schools in hopes to decrease the number of pregnancies and STDs within the school system. I think this account is incredibly beneficial and helpful to all students, even of the college age, because it is a topic that no one wants to directly speak about. This account allows students to click on these articles on their own time if they feel they should be informed about a particular topic. As well as actually tweeting original tweets, this account retweets a lot of articles from other similar accounts. For example, @transstudent tweeted “Transgender Day of Visibility is this week!” and @WISEinWV retweeted it. Without that retweet, I would have never known about this particular day and everything that it celebrates. When I eventually am in a classroom, I will have students in the LGBT community and it is important that I embrace their lifestyle so I can better understand them not only in the classroom, but as real people too.

The third account I followed was from the video we were asked to watch as part of the assignment. Shannon Smith, @shannoninottawa, is a principal in Ottawa, Canada who tweets out everything from educational articles and links to random information involving her school. Like the @WISEinWV account, Shannon retweets many things more so than she does original tweets, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! For example, on April 14, she retweeted a photo of her students in the gymnasium having a mouse car race. This is a fun and easy way for parents to see what all has been going on at school that day by just sending out one simple tweet. On April 17, Shannon tweeted that she was “Looking forward to a day of learning about the incredible and creative initiatives @ocdsb schools today at the #leadthewayevent.” Again, not only is this informing parents of the school’s agenda for the day, but this is engaging students and getting them excited for school instead of dreading going to a place that doesn’t embrace modern technology.

The final account I followed was also from the video we were required to watch. @d_martin05 is a math teacher who is also from Canada. This account tweets frequently and shares his daily blog posts. If I am being completely honest, I didn’t get as much out of this account as I did the others because a lot of his tweets are repetitive. However, it was good that I followed him because it exposed me to a whole different approach at using Twitter for educational purposes. Having a Twitter doesn’t mean you have to always be tweeting random thoughts and ideas; you can use it to daily advertise other forms of social media that you may have, like a blog post or something similar. It is amazing how large our social media world is, and the fact that I can incorporate it into the classroom now that I have seen some examples is really exciting!