YouTube- Twitter 2 Adventure

I really had a great time exploring YouTube this week! Up until recently, I had only used it to search how-to videos, songs, or educational videos to use in the classroom. Now with online teaching, I have gained a great deal of experience in recording, uploading, and linking my own lesson videos for my students. This has been a completely new experience for me and I have been feeling really "tech savvy" lately! Haha! Honestly though, it has been nice to be able to help coworkers with this, and in doing so, it has made me feel more confident in my abilities.

Creating my own playlists was a new task this week, but I feel like I rocked it! After a bit of exploring and a quick how-to search, I was on my way to creating playlists. I love organization, so to me this was basically just organizing my YouTube account so I can find things more easily in the future.

One problem I did run into was when I tried to add videos for use in the classroom to a playlist, I got a pop-up message that we are unable to do this for videos made for kids. This makes me wonder, how will it really help me in the classroom if I can't add the actual videos I will need to use? Maybe I am missing something? I have asked my classmates in our discussion forum, so I am hoping to get some expert feedback from them!

Moving on to my continued Twitter Adventure, I really just don't get the appeal of it yet! The pop-ups on my screen are driving me crazy! I can understand how it will be effective in keeping up with current events, the latest in educational technology, etc, but I really don't care to read about or see what someone's dog is doing. Maybe that's just because I'm not a dog person though. On another note, I did send my first tweet this week! I have to say it was a bit difficult because I am a very private person and I don't need for everyone to know what I'm thinking.

I explored Hootsuite and feel like it could be useful for managing social media, especially for businesses or people with multiple accounts. I don't really feel like it is necessary for me at this time because I am not very involved in social media. I am open to the option and may change my mind on this in the coming months as I become more involved. The feature that I feel will be most beneficial if I do decide to use it are the ability to see all of your streams in one place without having to switch to different apps.

In exploring TweetDeck, I found that it is similar to Hootsuite in that it helps to manage your Twitter account, but without the added convenience of managing all of your social media accounts in one place. The layout of the page looks well-organized and is easy to follow. The feature I like the most at this time is the ability to schedule posts for later. I think that could be effective for teachers to use to send reminders to parents and/or students. Oftentimes I think of something late at night, but of course I wouldn't want to send messages at that time. Being able to schedule these messages for later would be a nice convenience.

It has been a very busy week of learning about Web 2.0 tools! I have learned so much this week from my own explorations and from my fellow classmates! It is amazing to be learning alongside other teachers who understand the daily struggles we all face and who are willing to help problem-solve!