Sunday, July 10, 2011

Blog Post #2--Following eClassroom News on Twitter

For my Twitter follow, I chose eClassroom News.  They are a free web resource for educators who want information on technology to help provide a digital learning environment for their students.  Over the past week, they have posted many wonderful links to web-resources that support a variety of technological trends.  Among them was a link to their website eClassroomNews.com, where they provide many free materials that can be used by educators to enhance their teaching. In the time since I've been following eClassroom News, they have provided links to stories found on eSchoolNews such as the best Learning Management Systems for K-12, teaching the physics behind the game "Angry Birds," and recent grant funding opportunities for early childhood centers.  All of their Tweets direct users back to their main website that is home to many useful articles and links related to education and technology. Here is a screen cap of the eClassroom News website that users are directed to:



Image is from http://www.eclassroomnews.com/ homepage. 


I think that there is definitely an educational use for Twitter.  See my last blog post for an overview of Twitter and how it could be used in an educational setting.  Twitter can be an exciting way for teachers and students to communicate as well as for a classroom to stay current on relevant information.  For a class studying about world current events, maintaining a Twitter feed to TimeOut Kids is a great way to get immediate information on what is happening in the world.  I think it would be fun to assign a Twitter Monitor job to one child in the class every week whose job it is to check out the current events streaming in on the Twitter feed and to synthesize a report for the class at the end of each day.  This could be a wonderful way for a class to stay in touch with what's happening in the community and the world around them, and to introduce children to the notion of global affairs and current events.
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5 comments:

  1. mcpeggJuly 10, 2011 at 4:07 PM

    I really like your idea of assigning a student the Twitter Monitor Job. You can switch the student each week, so you get the whole class to participate. I think this would allow students to get excited about learning. Great Idea

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  2. ericalynne26July 11, 2011 at 5:49 PM

    After using Twitter for a few days, I found it to be kind of a hassle - but I think your idea of subscribing to feeds and having the students report on the updates each day is a great way to cut down on the chaos! Plus, I think the students would really enjoy getting the updates and discussing what others are saying about specific topics.

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  3. JasonJuly 11, 2011 at 9:13 PM

    I'm going to have to follow eClassroom News on twitter now. That seems like a really cool group to check in on from time to time.

    Erica, I also found it to be a bit of a hassle. Searching for #ed tech as was suggested in our syllabus didn't seem to yield many interesting results (for me at least), but I did end up following a couple of interesting social studies teachers. Their re-tweets of certain links and other information seem worthwhile.

    Also, I can see having students follow you on twitter being useful for updating students on things like homework/tests/review/topics of interest/etc. At the very least it's a fun extracurricular tool.

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  4. Beth DaileyJuly 17, 2011 at 11:52 AM

    Twitter Monitor Job! A fabulous idea which proves that schools should actually allow student to use social media instead of restricting them to "keep them safe." It's also an example of active learning.

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  5. AnonymousJanuary 31, 2013 at 4:08 AM

    E-learning through virtual classroom is a advance education system.That save once time to traveling to reach the classroom. One can access once's lecture though online.

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