Social Media and Twitter with Education

1. Samantha Queen
Harold Blanco
5 May 2015
Twitter
The first person I followed was @CI350class. I really like the idea of having twitter for
use in your class. I also like how the tweets are parallel with what we have been going over in
class. It aids in teacher-student communication, as well as teacher-parent communication.
Similar to Facebook, it is something that the students and parents are already using. So by using
it to promote your class is essentially getting on their level. Like I said, the tweets were almost
always about what was going on in the classroom, so it had tweets about digital storytelling in
the classroom and social media etiquette, as well as reminders and announcements like the class
pictures are up. The tweet I chose to highlight was the one about the class beginning robotics. It
was simple but I saw it as soon as it was posted on my twitter feed and it reminded me to bring in
materials for the class. I had forgotten. I did not get on twitter to check out your twitter page to
see when it was due; I was just scrolling through and happened to see it. The point is, it is a
simple communication tool, but it works.
@WISEinWV
This was the second person I followed. The account tweets things about sexual education,
such as facts and teaching techniques. Some are retweets from other wellness WV pages and
some are retweets from the CDC. Since I am going to be a health teacher a lot of the things the
account tweets are relevant to me. One of the tweets stuck out a lot to me, it was, “What's the
best way to teach sex ed. in the 21st century?”. It was very insightful and I believe it will be
helpful in my teaching techniques. I really appreciate what this account, as well as the WISE

2. program, is working to accomplish. Bringing awareness to sex education and things such as even
Bruce Jenner and transgender issues. The tweets help bring things that many don’t like to talk
about to light. When STD statistics show up on your timeline, it’s awareness. The tweet I
highlighted was a YouTube video about dress codes. It was about the sexism that is the female
dress code and I agree with everything the video was stating. Boys and even teachers shouldn’t
be distracted because of leggings; the issue is much larger than that.
@kylepace
The third account I followed was interesting. It had a lot of tweets that had to do with
technology. Throughout the semester he has posted about students creating apps, apps that are
helpful, sharing videos of students’ robotics projects, Google education information. There were
also tweets about relationships, leadership and motivation as well as general advice like “stop
saying ‘yeah but’”. The tweet I chose to highlight was a quote about collaboration, “the quietest
people have the loudest minds”, by a 9th grader named Jethro. This is so true. Just because they
are quiet doesn’t mean they do not know, it could mean they have so many ideas that they are
thinking way above and beyond. To see that this came from a 9th grade mind is amazing.
Sometimes it is the students that teach you things, causing you to become a better teacher
everyday.
@d_martin05
This was the last account I followed. Many of his tweets were just links to shared articles
from his own online newspaper like site. It was called Martin Daily, and described as “paper
about tweets about education”. The website is very neat with categories of education,
technology, and chat. Some of the articles were ways to teach absent students, or controversial
about whether or not Common Core help grow art education in schools. To be honest, the links

3. that are tweeted were not appealing to me. I would see the link and not want to click on it but
would just scroll on. It is a good thought because of all of the content covered on the site but is
not an effective way of getting quick information out. The tweet I highlighted was one where he
said, “we need to teach reading not assign reading”. This is a common issue in many of the
schools around me today. There is more emphasis on Accelerated Reading programs than there
are the students actually learning to enjoy reading. When reading is assigned it becomes a job
and many students are turned away by this idea. If we taught reading, the could discover a
passion for it.