Conversations with Twitter

I am not a great Twitter user. My tweets are still sporadic. Some days I will tweet every two minutes and then I will disappear for weeks at a time.

However, today I feel like interacting with Twitter and the reply button is insufficient as I am a writer (and verbose) and the minimal characters are sufficient for eliciting a thought but not discussing one.

Mary Beth Hertz (mbteach): Instead of banning, I wonder if schools could require a crash course in responsible use of social media for teachers #edchat

My new college is focused on innovative use of technology. What this means is that approved classroom use is ubiquitous (or expected to be). However, what that classroom use of technology looks like is less clear.

Do we have one word quizzes where students text me their answers?
Is it surfing the net for definitions?
Are we attempting to put together research on the fly in the classroom?
Am I using digital storytelling to connect with my students?

Tom Whitby: At one time in education it was okay for teachers to hug students. Those days are gone. #Edchat

My college used to be (twenty and thirty years ago), the kind of place where teachers would hug students. In fact, hugs were almost required in student to student interactions. However, today they counsel us against hugging. Don’t even touch the students, since you don’t know what they will feel is appropriate.

And I agree with that, as I am often touched by people I am not comfortable with (waiter directing me to a table, greeter shaking my hand).

However, I still miss the hugs. I wish the hugs were possible. I wish the world were a less litigious and painful place so that hugs were sweet and encouraging rather than fearful and potentially-abused physicalities.

Students Getting the Right Amount of Sleep Have Higher GPAs… I wonder how I can introduce that fact to my freshman. I wonder how I could make it real to them. (Maybe ask them to note when they sleep? Then tell them why afterwards?)

The AV Club: Watching TV is taking years off your life, according to scientists nobody asked.

I don’t watch television. So I guess I have extra years. And I certainly don’t watch television like my students, while talking to friends, writing their homework, and IMing the folks back home.

Watching television can be part of your life. It can be your life. I don’t recommend that, though. The argument, and the AV Club’s response appears in this article.

I wish I could always post on every single interesting tweet. But then I would never get that book review finished, or my classes prepared, or even my dinner eaten.