Twitter, or the Mystical Pit of Resource and Snark

I never understood Twitter. The whole concept always seemed completely ridiculous to me: write a 140-character blurb about what's on your mind. As a person who will willingly use twenty words when about four will do the trick, only getting to use about a dozen words blew my mind. It also seemed like a garbage dump of pop culture and philosophical quotes from angsty teens, not necessarily my cup of tea. From the outside, it didn't seem to provide the substance and meaningful connections that I prefer. I made an account my senior year of high school, tweeted one golden tweet...and didn't touch my account again. It seemed pointless. The idea that some educators purposefully use the site with their classes didn't make any sense to me. What could you get from social media that couldn't be learned in person?

Honestly, I had never even considered using any form of social media in the classroom up until the start of this class. I had always thought I would be a traditional English teacher: assigning books to read outside of school and having deep, socratic-style discussions during class time. It's not that I hate technology. I think it's because I survived high school without class-required blogging or online classrooms; consequentially, I make the mistake of assuming that my students will be perfectly fine in learning the same way. But the world in which my future students are growing up in is already vastly different than the one I experienced. Social media has become less of a mindless time-waster and more of a digital extension of the real world: a place to connect with others, exchange views, and share information. It is their world now. The articles we've read over the past couple weeks have really shown me how truly beneficial social media can be, as long as it's used effectively.

Brian Croxall's overviews of social media sites within the classroom in "Reflections on Teaching with Social Media" were very helpful for me. His idea of teaching students "transferable skills" through the use of social media made sense. In the real world, people need to collaborate and interact with others on a variety of platforms, not just through paper and pen or speaking. I quite liked the idea of the "social sixth sense." When students use social media to collaborate and connect, they are not only gaining new and unique insights. They are learning new ways to read people and how to navigate the complex digital environment they live in. As the venture on into the workforce, this will be a vital skill. Croxall's three lessons for educational social media use were so important for me to hear.

1. Be ready for problems.             
2. Be conscious of tool fatigue.
3. In the end, it is worth it.

           *Abbreviated slightly

These forced me to realize two thing. One: it's not going to be perfect; it'll probably never be perfect. But, I shouldn't let it stop me from trying to integrate new media. Two: don't use a tool for the sake of using it. Find something one thing that works and run with it. Too much technology equals a brain overload. Brain overloads are never good.

Twitter seems to be the best place to start in integrating social media into the secondary classroom, at least for me. "Twittering, Not Frittering: Professional Development in 140 Characters" did a really good job outlining how Twitter can actually help my networking and development as a teacher.
Even though the article was clearly from the earliest stages of Twitter, it still helped to provide an solid overview for the site for the newcomers (aka yours truly). As much as I hate the minimal character allowance, the way it forces you to be say exactly what you mean, perfect in a world where conciseness is a desirable skill, helps you to learn to synthesize rather than memorize. Like Suzie Boss mentioned, the customizable feed, not unlike Facebook, means that I can make my feed as professional and as education oriented as I want. The more and more I've used Twitter for this class, the more I've come to appreciate the resources it provides me all the time (The fact that I found an algorithm that analyzes the rhyming structure of Hamilton doesn't hurt). Thanks to "19 Educational Twitter Chats Worth Your Time", I've been able to track several different hashtags, including #edchat, #CatholicEdChat, #engchat, and #mschat, all of which tie into the kind of education professional I want to be. No longer are educators limited to the views of their school, their district, or their region. Twitter gives me access to see what educators do differently on opposite ends of the globe. It helps connect me the the larger world. With the growing globally community, globally-connected teachers are required. Twitter helps me to be that teacher.

I now want to try to incorporate Twitter into my classroom structure in some way. While it's not feasible in a high school setting to have students posting on Twitter every day, the ability to connect with and exchange ideas with multiples students at once is almost unbelievable. After taking in Croxall's observations in his own classes, I think it would take a little finagling to find that perfect place where students are tweeting because they have something meaningful to share, not because their grade requires it.

My dream Twitter classroom would have to mimic what Mark Sample blogged about in "Twitter is a Snark Valve." Yes, his students did learn to engage critically with each other, allowing their classroom conversations to extend further. Those "Hey, look at this!" posts show that students are absorbing and retaining what they learned. I want that kind of engagement in my own class, where they are genuinely eager to find out more. But, even more than that, I want the snark. It seems contrary to everything a teacher might want. If you think about it, though, we talk so much about the importance of relationships, and allowing students to feel safe and open in their environment. All that sarcasm, joking, and fooling around means they trust you. If students trust you, they're more likely to tell you what they really think about something. Sample mentioned that this snark allows students to take "an oppositional stance." Isn't that the dream for all educators, that students are dissecting a topic in such a way that they form their own unique opinions on it? Twitter offers the ability to hear what is typically unheard. Who knows what insightful ideas might be gained and what long and unexplored paths they may lead us down because of one snarky tweet. Even in a high school setting, this would be so beneficial–allowing and encouraging that "uncensored, no-holds-barred opining" [sic] that can lead to lightbulb moments in education.

I was going to touch on so much more in this blog post, mainly the idea of a flipped ELA classroom and utilizing GoogleDocs/GoogleClassroom, but this is already long enough as is. Perhaps an extra post might be in order? Despite all of that, I am starting to appreciate my forced entry into the Twittosphere (Twitosphere? Twittersphere? Tweetosphere?) and the resources it has already provided me in my short amount of (active) time of the site. It's only up from here, I suppose. I just hope that Twitter is still relevant by the time I have my own classroom, so that I can share this medium with my students. I can only imagine what they'll discover then!