Using Twitter as an educator

After using twitter for 4 weeks, I have come to really enjoy using the links and resources from other people.  It is a great way to ask a question and get an answer fairly fast.  I especially like the principals that I am following on twitter.  They give links to interesting education sites and uses  a person can find on the Internet.  This would be like Steven Anderson tweeting 20 Websites To Find Free eBooks at  http://bit.ly/e4kujZ. I believe this will be very useful for me down the road in not only finishing my education but, also teaching my students.  As a teacher, I can borrow other teachers information and clues about how to connect with students.  After looking at Steven Anderson's tweet, 50 ways to use wordle in the classroom, I was amazed by the different learning options for students. http://bit.ly/dE9cAm.
When I teach, I would like to incorporate twitter into my classroom.  I think it would be a good discussion forum for my students.  In ag they can follow a variety of organizations that our agriculture related and network with companies and producers on twitter.  These sites could include the National Cattleman's Beef Institute in Washington D.C. to many others.  By following these people, they can learn about new sites that will teach them about ag in ways I could never dreamed to.  For example, Beef Cattle News keeps an update of all prices like "Record U.S. Cattle, Hog Prices Seen on Shrinking Herds, Increased Demand" http://bloom.bg/ecAe5M.

Fun with Text

Wordle and Taxexdo could be a very useful website to make use of in a classroom.  These sites would be able to capture student’s creative side.  There are a variety of ways I could incorporate this in my classroom.  I am very interested in using this to introduce a topic.  I would like to take all the words in the unit and make a wordle and then let the students look at it to get an idea of what we are going to be learning.  Another  way to use this would be let the kids make a picture of the words to review the unit.  After they make this, I would have them do an outline of what these terms mean.  These are only a few ways to use these sites but I encourage everyone to check them out!

<www.wordle.com> and <www.taxexdo>