PLN Reflection


In mid-September I was asked to open a Twitter account as a PLN (personal learning network) assignment for my graduate tech in ed class. I was very hesitant as this is something I have been avoiding for a few years now. I have always found Twitter to be super confusing. As I scrolled through the tweets this past few weeks it hasn’t gotten any less confusing. I am definitely a Facebook person. I can’t go one day without it.

On October 21st I came across an article that was posted on the edudemic page which is titled, “It’s Official: Using Twitter Makes Students More Engaged.” This article discusses a study done by a professor at Michigan State University. It reports how college students are more engaged in class, professors and fellow classmates as well as receiving higher grades when parts of their classes are on Twitter. The professor also found that there are 200 million active users Twitter who post more than 175 million tweets a day.

I picked this tweet to reflection on because I am not sure how student’s grades could benefit from using Twitter. I thought as teachers and future teachers we are trying to keep the student so of these types of sites at school. The schools I have been in have blocked all of these kinds of sites. I guess this leaves me with one question. If this is the way of our future how will people, like me who don’t understand exactly how to use Twitter be able to integrate it into our curriculum?

Michelle's Twitter