I have had a twitter account for about two and a half years and have hardly used it. I've even gone so as to delete it on a couple of occasions and am now back at it. I mainly used it to follow friends and others in the athletic training world. My favorite pages were always the ones posting and re-tweeting injury pictures! I had never really understood the design purpose of the website and hadn't thought of it being involved in educational purposes until today when I started doing some more research on the meaning and purposes of twitter and the variety of it uses. I think that social media is too large of a presence to ignore and instead of trying to steer students away from the social media craze, microblogging in education could encourage the use of it in a positive and productive manner. Educators could use this as an avenue for projects or encouraging students to come together and create trends about what they feel is most important and it could be a helpful teacher to gain public perspectives.
In the athletic world, I feel that microblogging is already more established. I think this is because several professional athletes have their own twitter accounts and the fans of these athletes follow them to get the inside scoop, so to speak. In the news and on other social media sites it is not uncommon for a referral to be made about what one of these individual's tweeted about and can sometimes lead to negative media coverage for the athletes themselves.
I think that microblogging in education vs athletics are two very different types of social media and I think that in regards to athletics it will always be done for entertainment purposes. In regards to education however, I think that the more classrooms and teachers that accept and implement this into their classes the larger this will become and before we know it, it very well may be a force to be reckoned with. I think that this will take the time and patience of select teachers who have a great understanding of microblogging and have ideas of how to put it to educational use. For now, I am still brainstorming on this myself and look forward to the semester of learning what this will mean for me and my own education.
In the athletic world, I feel that microblogging is already more established. I think this is because several professional athletes have their own twitter accounts and the fans of these athletes follow them to get the inside scoop, so to speak. In the news and on other social media sites it is not uncommon for a referral to be made about what one of these individual's tweeted about and can sometimes lead to negative media coverage for the athletes themselves.
I think that microblogging in education vs athletics are two very different types of social media and I think that in regards to athletics it will always be done for entertainment purposes. In regards to education however, I think that the more classrooms and teachers that accept and implement this into their classes the larger this will become and before we know it, it very well may be a force to be reckoned with. I think that this will take the time and patience of select teachers who have a great understanding of microblogging and have ideas of how to put it to educational use. For now, I am still brainstorming on this myself and look forward to the semester of learning what this will mean for me and my own education.