Picture Credit

I have been connected to social media ever since MySpace was the "thing". I can remember being so excited to change my top 5 friends for the week, the background of my page, and spending hours online with my friends, I had just got home from seeing. Then Facebook became the new sensation, and although I am still a Facebook user, I don't post much unless it's knowledge that must be shared with the world or a picture. Surprisingly, my profile is active because who knows what can happen if I lose my 1000+ "friends" on there! Instagram came third in my social media life, and although I don't have much time to take awesome pictures to upload, my friends list there is much smaller. Twitter came fourth, and after 40ish tweets I could not keep up with it so I stopped using it. However, today I found out that I did not know how to properly navigate it. After seeing the features it has and its potential, I am so excited to get back on Twitter and use it as a tool for my classroom. After searching for a student blog on Twitter to comment on, I came across a teacher who is using Twitter to share with others the work his students have been doing. This summer his students had to read an article and summarize it. He uploaded the link to the class blog and was asking for individuals to comment on his students' work. I found this idea to be incredible because not only are these kids integrating the use of technology in their learning, but they are also receiving positive feedback which is essential for a student's esteem (according to Maslow!). Here is the link to the post I commented on: https://kidblog.org/class/slc2017/posts/5hems2v01d5amr0fnypbng742

Learning about how to use Wikipedia was mind blowing! For most of my life as a student, I have always heard teachers/professors tell me not to use Wikipedia when doing research, but never explained to me WHY?! To be honest, I did not listen to them and still used it as a way to start. I would use their reference section to find more links about the topic I was researching and start off there. Now, that I know how to further identify if an article is worth using or not, I am ready to share my knowledge with others. I want to teach second grade which makes me hesitant and happy at the same time. Happy, because I will be able to introduce to them the idea that Wikipedia is a great tool if we know how to navigate it, hesitant, because I don't want any other teachers/professors later on telling them otherwise. Overall, there is so many awesome resources out there, that I can use or modify to meet my students' needs and I am so excited to try a couple, my first year of teaching.