Journal # 2-Join the Flock!/ Enhance Your Twitter Experience (Nets I, III, V)

Miller, S. (2010). Enhance your twitter experience. Learning & Leading With Technology, 37(8), Retrieved from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/20100607#pg16

Ferguson, H. (2010). Join the flock!. Learning & Leading With Technology, 37(8), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/issues/Join_the_Flock.aspx

                Hadley Ferguson and Shannon Miller have developed two articles to allow everyone to gain insight to the positive usage of Twitter. Most people see Twitter as a way to keep up with their friends and the latest celebrities, but Hadley and Shannon have demonstrated how useful Twitter can be to teachers as well. Everyone can find a positive use with Twitter which is depicted in these two articles.
                 Both Hadley and Shannon express the importance of building a PLN. This is otherwise known as a Personal Learning Network. This is what makes Twitter so useful. In building a pln, you are able to gain new information from people who share the same interests in learning as you do. To build a PLN, you must register for Twitter and build your own profile with designated interests and preferably a picture to show who you are. The next step is to choose who you want to follow. With twitter, you can look up people with the same interests as you, such as a fellow teacher, and follow their profile. It is also advised to make a list of what you are interested in as well because your fellow twitter community members can look up your list and gain interest as well. When you follow their profile, everything they post shows up on your twitter stream. Shannon suggests helpful ways to manage all of your followers and people you follow by creating a Twitter organizer. This allows you to better keep track of everyone and everything on your twitter profile. Both Hadley and Shannon express how important it is to make yourself visible by contributing to postings as well. Posting on your twitter page allows you to share educational ideas, and information that all of your followers may be interested in. If any information posted is of interest, you are able to tag the post to spread it along on your profile. This gives people credit and great confidence to continue to share more of their expertise. Everyone can learn something from someone, and twitter allows you to gain access to an infinite amount of people or educators that you may not have the chance to meet in real life.
                  Twitter is a great tool to spread and share ideas with fellow teachers or people who share the same interests as you. Many twitter members make a personal account to share personal interests, and they also make a business account to gain new information and insight with their work. Both Shannon and Hadley greatly express the importance of twitter as a Web 2.0 activity for teachers and students to gain new insight and share ideas with the world. You may not be given the opportunity to meet or gain information from a mentor or role model in real life, but with twitter anything is possible.

Analysis Questions:
1. What makes Twitter better than myspace or facebook?
                   After learning about everything that twitter can do, I feel that it is more of a learning tool than myspace or facebook. Most people use their myspace or facebook to stay in contact with friends or family. It is also a lot harder to find people with the same interests as you on facebook and myspace because of all of the security measures. Twitter is just a site to share ideas and follow people that you are interested in. It is mainly a website to share your ideas with the world, not to solely keep in contact with family or friends.
2. How do you get people to follow your profile on Twitter?
                    As it is very easy on Twitter to look people up and click on their profile to follow, that does not mean that you will gain followers. Generally in order to get followed you have to put yourself out there. The more ideas and knowledge you share with the twitter community, the more interest you will gain from them. This will result in more people following your profile. If you don't put yourself out there, there is nothing to follow. When you generally select a person to follow because you share their same interests, most of the time that will give them interest to look at or even follow your profile. It is all about putting yourself out there.
3. What if you reach out to someone on Twitter and they do not share the same interest back?
                     The beauty of the internet is that you never have to confront anybody face to face or even see them in real life. If somebody is not interested in you, their is no harm done and you can simply find someone else. Because they are online, you will never have to run into them again or face them and be embarrassed. There is always no harm done in trying. It is not like a person-to-person reaction in which you have more risk of getting embarrassed. On the internet, it is alot easier to protect yourself from being put into that type of situation. You won't be liked by everyone, but there is certainly people out there that will find interest in your thoughts and ideas. As mentioned before, it is all about putting yourself out there and giving some type of effort.