Taylor Olsson followed several educators on Twitter for a class assignment, including Steven W. Anderson, Kyle Pace, Tom Altepeter, and Jerry Blumengarten. Olsson observed the types of content each educator shared, such as inspirational quotes, education resources, and ways to engage students. Olsson found value in connecting with other educators on Twitter to gain insights and answers to questions about teaching.

1. Taylor Olsson
CI 350
Twitter Assignment
I chose to follow Steven W. Anderson, Kyle Pace, Tom Altepeter, and Jerry
Blumengarten for my twitter assignment. We also had to follow CI 350 class and
while following that I noticed a lot of interesting things that were tweeted. For
example the slide share video on using social media tools for learning and teaching
tweeted on 11/26/2013. Also I learned a lot from the article/videos “It’s not about
the technology, it’s about what teachers can do with it!” Tweeted 11/23/2013. In
this article they talk about the different ways teachers can use technology in their
classroom, but they also talk about how it can be used affectively not just for fun, but
also for learning.
While following Steven W. Anderson, he is more business like, he also tweets
inspirational sayings to just brighten everyone’s day like the one he tweeted on
12/11/2013. He tweets a lot during the day. He tweeted one day “classrooms don’t
prepare for the real world. They are and should be the real world.” Which at first
confused me a little, I wasn’t really sure what he meant by that but then I thought
about it a little more, and I think he means instead of talking about “this will happen
in the real world” we should make the classroom the real world and get students
prepared for what they are about to go into. Give them real life scenarios and show
them how to handle it.
While following Kyle Pace, he tweeted a YouTube video on 12/3/2013 that
was “teaching with YouTube, digital channels for teaching”. After watching the
video I found it very interesting the different things you can find as a teacher and
the helpful things people do put on social media to guide you are give you tips. He
tweets a lot about Q4 and I wasn’t really sure what that was until I looked it up, as
far as I could tell, its questions people ask and he answers.
I also follow Tom Altepeter and he tweets a lot about what he does for
education, like on 11/21/2013 he tweeted “spending the morning doing planning
with Give Next (a youth philanthropy program) and gives a link to what Give Next is.
He does a lot of things like that with philanthropy and helping other people. He’s
also a Broncos fan.
Jerry Blumengarten is big into education as well, on 12/10/2013 he tweeted
“I find it wonderful that it is a level playing field here. You can connect with
educators on all levels & positions” then he always #edchat which is education chat.
He talks a lot about be able to be connected to educators and how effective that is,
he says there are some very passionate educators there and he is so thankful to have
them and be connected with them.
Overall it was very interesting to see some of the things these higher
educators or people who care so much about education tweet and use social media.
I think this is so helpful because if you have a question you can tweet it and someone
will answer you or give you a link that answers it like some of those people I
followed and that is so helpful as a teacher. Also I think Jerry was right when he said
its so helpful to work with people and be connected with educators on all levels
because if you aren’t then how are you supposed to do your job to the best of your
ability when you are not using all of your recourses.