I am a Tweetaholic and proud to admit it.
I have days when I Tweet several times a day followed by days of me not Tweeting at all. I have several accounts but actively only use two now: one for my PLN and one for my students.
I have had my PLN Twitter account since July, 2009
I started Tweeting for my students a month later in August, 2009.
I thought that I would be able to Tweet for my students the way that I Tweet for my PLN.
I imagined myself Tweeting out assignments reminders, extra credit trivia facts and links for them to follow for research. Of course that didn’t happen; my students did not actively use Twitter several years ago so I was really Tweeting for myself, other educators and city tweeters who followed me for local information updates.
Guess what has happened this year? The campus is filled with avid tweeters now. They tweet: reminders about after-school appointments with friends, mood/interest indicators throughout class, insults about clothes or bodily odors, compliments about accessories, messages of love and/or lust, etc.
Some of them have started following me and send me little messages.
They love to say “Hi” during class.
These are not quite the messages that I envisioned we would be sending to one another but… at least I do have their attention.
I received this message the other day that encourages me to keep tweeting
My Daily Assignment blog posts are Tweeted out and this student saw the tweet, followed the link and then asked this question about the assignment. Yay me!!!!
I have spent awhile trying to get them to see that Twitter can be so much more than a way of sending out insults and foolishness. I want them to see that Twitter can be used to develop and grow their own Personal Learning Network.
Hopefully next year we will progress to that level. Hopefully….