Week 5 : Twitter and Personal Learning Networks

As is sit here late on Sunday night, after another great Super Bowl, I can’t help but notice that my feedly home page was exploding with sports articles about the big game! The article titled “Peyton Manning RidesBroncos Defense to the Title” sums up the entire game in one sentence. The Broncos offense had a strong first half, and their defense took over the second half to give them a big 24-10 victory over the Carolina Panthers.

(FoxSports, 2016)

Once again, I was able to further explore a tool called Twitter. Most people now a days are familiar with Twitter, however I feel that it is used in so many different ways. It wasn’t until this weeks learning activity that I was able to fully understand the educational purposes that Twitter can bring. For those who do not know what Twitter is, it’s a social media platform that allows you to connect with individual accounts and get live updates on the go. The unique feature of Twitter is that the updates must be under 140 characters. Twitter can be compared to Feedly, because it allows you to follow certain pages that consistently provide updates and current stories. The use of hashtags or the pound symbol (#) can also be helpful when searching for a particular topic. By putting (#) in front of a particular topic such as #ADED1P32 it allows you to connect with anyone else who might be talking about the same thing. The ability to connect first hand with people on Twitter can be done through direct messaging or responding directly to ones tweet.

(Twitter, 2015)

Over the years of using Twitter, I have come to the realization that information can be spread so quickly. For example, if you are watching a taped show, you better stay off a social media site like Twitter. If you don’t, you will find “spoiler alerts” that will leave you frustrated and disappointed. If you want to find out what’s trending worldwide, Twitter has that covered. On the home page, you can find a “trending now section” that will allow you the ability to stay connected with the move up to date worldwide news.

Twitter will be a good learning tool to add to my personal learning environment (PLE) diagram. Although it is already there under my collaboration section, I feel that it can also be useful under the educational sector. Twitter has millions of pages that can help me learn and develop my educational background. Having an educational account allows me to be more professional and eliminate irrelevant useless tweets. This helps me to keep my digital footprint more positive.