Twitter as a Professional Resource?!?!

"I will never have a Twitter account. Social media is annoying and Twitter is for people who have too much time on their hands." That is what I said some time ago. Now, I am thinking "don't knock it till you try it" because I have a Twitter (https://twitter.com
/MathMaticalBoss) and it is great.

http://teachthought.com/teaching/20-simple-assessment-strategies-can-use-every-day/

The picture to the right represents my thoughts about Twitter before my grad course "forced" me to create an account. People are brain-washed and absorbed by their phones and technology and Twitter adds to this. This may be true for those who use Twitter recreationally, but when you use it professionally, it can supply you with endless resources. For example, this resource posted by Socrative to the right gave 20 assessment strategies any educator can use on a daily basis. I thought this resource was great because I feel restricted with my assessment tools and ideas. I really liked how some of these assessment ideas have students writing about what they have learned. In a math class, writing in complete sentences is absent a lot of the times and I want to change that in my learning environment.

Another great tool that you can use to your advantage on Twitter are the professional learning communities (PLCs). PLCs are groups of people that share ideas and help each other out with problems, ideas, and/or theories. For example, if you wanted to learn more about the Common Core State Standards you could participate in a Twitter chat about the subject. I participated in the using blogs as educational tools chat (#blogchat). Honestly, I tried to join 4 other edchats that covered topics I wanted to talk about, but they weren't chatting at the times listed on the official Twitter educational chat schedule. This chat was a last resort, but was still interesting. The chat seemed to center around one theme: using blogging to take the conversation further. So, I asked everyone if they use open-ended questions at the end of their blogs to keep the conversation going and I got tons of responses, retweets, and favorites. One person suggested that I use the open-ended question as a bridge to the essential questions on the unit. I thought that was a very great idea.