Journal # 2- NETS-T 5a.

"Join the Flock"
Ferguson, H. (2010). Join the flock. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37(8), 12-14. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20100607?pg=14&pm=2&fs=1#

In her article, "Join the Flock",  Hadley Ferguson discusses the idea of how twitter can be a great tool for one's Personal Learning Network (PLN), as she describes it twitter is a "virtual meeting place". She goes into great detail and describes how twitter has come to enhance her teaching career. She describes the many details that twitter has and how she was able to increase her social network through twitter. The author informs the reader of various ways to expand through twitter. For example she gives the advice to change ones picture so it can be more personalized, or to also start following other people and that way more people will follow you as a result. The article appears to be an invitation to be part of this great opportunity that twitter came out to be for the author, Hadley Ferguson.

 

Question 1

After reading about the author's experience with twitter, would that have motivated you to create your own twitter account? Why or why not?
After reading Ferguson's experience I would have definitely created an account and used twitter the same way the author did. Given that we are in the process of becoming teachers twitter can be a great tool for us to communicate with other individuals that are in out position or with current teachers and learn about the teaching methods they are applying within their classroom. We are lucky to be living through a generation where we can use technology as our allied and socialize with people all over the world and be able to find new ways to improve ourselves as teachers, so why not take advantage of that?


"Enhance your twitter experience" 
McClintock, S. (2010). Enhance your twitter experience. Learning and Leading with Technology, 37(8), 14-17. Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20100607?pg=16&pm=2&fs=1#pg16

Just like the title of the article depics it, with this article Shannon McClintock takes us in a much deeper journey exploring many of the other sources that we can find and use through twitter. For example she informs us that we can create a personalized list, or that there is such thing as a twitter organizer in order to make things more visualy clear. Also the idea of creating a discussion forum using hashtags. Throughout this whole article there is also a whole new vocabulary that has been created only within a few years. New concepts such as hashtags, retweet, mistweet,microblog, among others are mentioned, that perhaps to some people it doesn't really make any sense, but as she mentioned it once you become acquinted it is all very easy to explore and learn new things.

Question 2

Among the may resources within twitter that Shannon McClintock mentioned which one would you definately make of use and why?
I would use the twitter organizer because I believe it would make my life easier and as she mentioned it there is so much information that can be obtained through twitter that it be a nice tool to be organized and know where I can find any type of information in a very easy manner rather than having things pile up and not know where to look.