THING 3 Twitter and On-line Communities

I have a twitter account @mybookbests.  I took a class on twitter on-line through UB and I enjoyed it.  I look at twitter but I do not really use it.  For this class I reviewed the materials.  I was especially interested in the article, "Twitter is Stupid. (until you realize)....While I understand the point of his article, and I don't think twitter is stupid, I do think it can be a waste of time.  I try to limit my media on  a daily basis and even so I  spend a lot of time on a device. On-line I read the New York Times, and the Albany Times Union.  I love to look at the Huffington Post headlines, they are the best and I look at what is on CNN and MSNBC.  I scroll through facebook and then I might try to extend my time on the couch by looking at twitter.  However, I know that my time would be better spent, at this point, by doing one of the activities for this class or something I have to do for work.  While I know that twitter can be informative and not a waste of time, I am not interested in being a full participant.  I don't feel that I have comparable offerings like say WebMd to be a full participant and frankly who cares what project I did at school or what my thoughts are on a certain topic?  Who cares about connecting with people around the world when you don't have any time to connect with people in your building?  As stated previously  I think my time could be better spent somewhere else and I always hear my mother's voice in my head, "God knows when you are wasting time." 

I read all of the materials on twitter posted for this class.  I liked the video about the attention span of people that has dwindled because of technology and I am concerned about that.  At Christmas, I told my two teenagers they couldn't bring their devices so that they would socialize with their cousins.  They didn't bring them but the cousins did, so there was limited socializing and their cousins chose their devices over sleigh riding. 

I think that people have to start making conscious choices about their use of technology.  I try to do that and twitter just doesn't make the grade for me.  For this assignment I looked at the activities for Veteran Tweeters and ended up signing up for TweetDeck.  Below is a shot of my page that has been tweet decked:

THING 2 PHOTO FUN

I read through the information about photo fun.  I realize the attraction of services like snap chat, especially as I have two teenagers. However, since one of my roles for the district is building technology co-coordinator, I am not comfortable with the liability issues.  Unless you have a district camera (which no one does) technically you could get into trouble with pictures of students on your personal device or even school device.  I see how snapchat could be used with parents and I might try that, although, that would be a time commitment that I just don't have. 

I tried out Big Huge Labs.  I love all of the things you can do on that and I will have to test them out to see if they work on the chromebooks in my building.  I was using my IPAD.  I made a card that is a take off on a biography project that I already do with fourth graders.  I also used the photosforclass to find an image.  Here it is:

Cool Tools Blog

I did a blog last year when I took cool tools.  Note to self, do a better job at saving site and login information.  I read the articles and started thinking about how I might use a blog for my current project which is co-teaching a kindergarten tech class. 

I liked how Weebly had a site making page that was linked to a blog.  However, since we use google I thought I would check out the google classroom as my understanding is that too has blog capabilities.  I made a google classroom for my kindergarten tech page.  This might work  better for us as we use cleverized machines.  The kindergarten  teachers would like a big K that students click on and then it would bring them to a page with the sites on it. I think google classroom might work well for this because the most recent activity is posted at the top which is easy access.  It is also  my understanding that you could  have students blog too.  Here is the site that I started to create. It is a draft.  Some of the items are more updated on a USB that I keep at work.  Once I determine that this is the way to go, I will perfect and finish this site. 

https://classroom.google.com/u/1/c/ODIyMjY1MTA1NVpa