#Ohmygosh, Mrs. Dunham, can I totally follow you on twitter!?

This week I have spent some time joining the 21st century and creating a twitter account. I created the account with the expectation that all I would see if a bunch of hashtag crazy tweenagers complaining about their classes or homework. Little did I know that professional teachers use this site to communicate about their experiences, share their best ideas, and ask questions about language classes, lesson plans, and expectations.
I experienced two twitter chats this week, as I didn't have a full hour to spend on both. This first chat that I attended was on Wednesday (10/2) #ELT English Language Teachers. As I sat in on the chat I was very confused as to what I was supposed to be doing/ what I was looking for. As a Spanish teacher, I found that some of the practices that they were discussing really didn't pertain to me. I could understand their questions/comments but found it to be a little boring to sit in on.
On Thursday I attended the Foreign Language Chats #langchat which I found to be a little more entertaining. Here the teachers were lead by a facilitator and simply shared questions and comments about lesson plans and specific sites that they use. I found myself clicking on these sites and saving them for future reference. I am teaching a level five class this year so I have found that I am able to branch into many different things that I haven't used before.
I think that following these chats/people on twitter could be beneficial for me. As I said before I had to attend two of them because I couldn't attend a full one this week. I think that this would be far more beneficial if I had the time to spend on twitter. I barely have time to check my email. I spend two hours on the road every day so I find that when I get home I only have time to make dinner, grade some papers, and relax for five minutes. I did find that many of the bloggers that I followed were writing about and discussing things that are relevant to my teaching practices so I hope that I can find time to really read what they have to say in their posts.
I also asked one of my students to help me out with this this week because I knew they would think it was funny that I didn't know how to tweet. They said they would help me and said "oh my gosh, we can totally follow you on twitter!". I have yet to see any of them follow me, probably because I am following "boring teacher stuff." Let's keep it that way!
:) Hasta luego!
Alissa