Thing 10: Twitter

Well I did it! I am officially a "tweeter". In the short time that I have had to explore Twitter, I was pleased to see that I could follow some things that were of interest to me, including "Library Journal" and "Flashlight Worthy" to satisfy my love of literature, and "Parent's Magazine" to keep up with the latest and greatest trends in parenting. I'm sure that as I continue to explore that I will find many more people and organizations to "follow". Right off the bat, I can see that Twitter is similar to Facebook in that it helps people stay connected to friends, however in this respect, I prefer Facebook. One feature that I found exciting was the fact that I could follow "experts" and people that I admire. For example, a friend of mine follows someone who was on the Nutmeg committee and she was able to be one of the first to see the novel that had won this year's Nutmeg Award because the woman had "tweeted" it.

When navigating through "The Best of the Web 2008" and "Time's 50 Best Websites of 2009, I found many sites that I feel would be an asset in every classroom, including Wikispaces and Google Docs. I am especially excited about trying Google Docs in the upcoming year, both with my colleagues as well as with my students. Google Docs is a way to publish, share and collaborate on documents, including word and spreadsheets. Some of the pro's of Google Docs are that you can access a document from anywhere, not just the computer that it was created on. How convenient will it be to create a document on Google rather than having to email it to myself if I want to work on it at home? Another pro is that it allows for file sharing, so I can share my document with colleagues and/or students. Furthermore, we can work and collaborate on documents at the same time. Finally, it's FREE! In a tight budget year, that is the key word! Now to the cons. In order to access Google Docs, one must be connected to the internet. This is not always easy to do when there are high demands for the computer labs and only one computer in each classroom. A couple of other minor details were that there were too many extra steps to change the name of a google document and you can't easily organize things into folders like you can in Word. I'm sure that I will find many more things that I like and dislike about Google Docs as I become more familiar with it, but from what I've seen so far, I think that it's going to be a wonderful addition to my classroom next year. I can't wait to share it with my colleagues!