Journal 2: "Join the Flock!" & "Enhance Your Twitter Experience" (NETS - III, VI, V)

Ferguson, H. & McClintock Miller, Shannon. (2010, June/July). Join the flock!. Enhance your twitter experience. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37(8), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/issues/Join_the_Flock.aspx

Ferguson and McClintock Miller write about PLNs (Personal Learning Network), specifically Twitter, a virtual community of individuals.  Within this community, individuals come together to share knowledge, learn, communicate, and collaborate.  Ferguson continues by giving you step-by-step directions on how to successfully create and use your twitter account.

Set up your account: Who are you and why are you on twitter

Learn to follow: Choose people you want to learn from; what are your interests?

Tap into great lists: “A good way to find people to follow is to check out the lists that other people create.”

Watch and Listen: You may silently interact within your community until you are ready to participate.  Watch, listen, and learn; when you are ready… participate!

Give generously: Once you are ready to delve in, start re-tweeting.  The more you re-tweet the larger you PLN community will become

Expose yourself: begin with simple, positive tweets, and then begin to share you ideas, links, and tools

Tag your tweet: add a hashtag (# symbol) so more people can follow your tweets

Use your twitter organizer: the organizers available help you organize your tweets into columns

Manage with a bookmarlet: to share resources by bookmarking it into hootsuite and sending out a tweet

Be strategic: make a plan of action when using twitter... how you are you going to allocate you time?

What will you search for in Twitter to help you as a professional? Why is this important?

After reading these two articles I became excited to develop my twitter PNL.  In order to create my PNL I must begin by: Setting up myaccount,learn how to follow, choose people you want to learn from, and tap into great lists.  I am very thankful for my Educ 422 Professor at Cal State San Marocs because I will definitey begin by using his tweets and PNL in order to begin to learn, tap into great lists, and follow.  This one step will allow me to tap into other peolple with my same interests and their PNL.  This will open my Twitter doors!

I will search tweets such as: elementary education, multicultural education, kindergarten lessons on _______, classroom managment, and so on.

Why is bookmarking in Twitter useful?
Bookmarking in twitter can become useful because it has a similar conceept as "favorites" or "Diigo," for instance, but it takes catologying information one step futher.  Bookmarking on twitter, then allows you to save the bookmark and tweet about it to you PNL.  It helps and supports your PNL.