I know nothing about blogs...or twitter...so this will be a definite adventure for me. :) Cynthia

I'm the same way Cynthia...have seen both, but never participated in either!

Same here, Carrie and Cynthia! I'm very proud that I could figure out how to make an account and a comment - wow!

I'm so relieved that the 3 of you are new to blogs and twitter. I have a facebook account, which is pretty popular with both students and teachers in the rural west michigan area that I live. I know no one that has a Twitter account (except maybe that guy married to Demi Moore that was in a race to have more people "follow" him than CNN). Anyway, it is good to know that we're setting out on this adventure together! Good luck! P.S. Can the blog be set up through this Wiki website or do we need to find a different webpage? If you haven't watched the video clips on RSS and Wik's that the Erik attached you should do so, they were VERY informative.

I'm new to all of this, too but am excited to learn about blogs, twitter, etc. in a way that relates to teaching. After all, this is an important part of our students' lives so this will be one more way to connect with them. I'm anxious to see how I'll be able to use web tools to help engage my students in science!

Don't worry! Once you get rolling with these web tools, they do actually become intuitive. The "week 1" description has some info about blogs and give you two options for starting a blog (Blogger or Posterous). There are many options, but these are the two that I find the easiest to use. The direct link for the info on blogs is: http://teachingsscience20.pbworks.com/Blogs I have used Blogger in the past and I am now using Posterous because I can write a very quick post and e-mail it to my blog - it is pretty slick.

I'll be honest, Twitter is probably the hardest tool to get your head around. I find it incredibly useful and have built a broad network using it. I'll be sharing some of the "Science 2.0" columns that I co-author for NSTA's The Science Teacher. Almost all of the teachers that Include in those pieces are people that I have "met" on Twitter. I am also co-facilitating a regular web chat (#scichat) that used Twitter. It is a great way to build connections with science teachers around the state. However, I will not be surprised if many of you end up not liking Twitter and decide to abandon it after class. I'm OK with that -- my goal is to introduce you to a lot of tools & help you think about what could work for your students and your comfort level.

I finally figured a few things out--mostly that I needed to join the workspace! Suddenly everything was revealed! I have avoided twitter, wikis, and blogging, simply because I don't know how to best use them for increasing student learning and I don't want to just randomly add to the 70 million blogs (from the youtube video) out there--I'm hopeful to learn how to use a PLN to help organize all of this. I also teach online and teach other instructors online teaching and learning strategies, so I'm very excited to update and increase my skills and experience.

I have joined the work space and have tried to enter my info in the data table, but it's not showing up. Can anyone help me with this? Also are there any recomended privacy setting on twitter? Thanks for your help!

Jeremy, be sure you first select the "edit" tab toward the top of the page (not "view").

Jeremy, I just used the google form at the bottom of the page. If you used the google form then our professor will add you to the table. Also, I just signed up for twitter...something I swore I would never do (even though I have a facebook page), but professor I will trust you that you do have good uses for this. :-)

Kelly -- You may want to check out the VoiceThred conversation that I posted to the "announcements." I am very curious to see how they manage the process -- it has great application for online teaching.

Stephanie -- I find Twitter professionally valuable, but I do understand if others do not. At the end of the course you can drop it if you don't like it! #scichat is in its infancy, but could be a pretty big deal. I might have some other big news for #scichat on Twitter later this summer.

I completely trust you Professor Brunsell! The only thing I have ever really known twitter to be used for is people sharing "status updates" with each other. I do look forward to seeing some more relevant and valuable ways to use it.

I am going to check out the VoiceThread event. I've seen it, but of course never used it! I think it has great potential, and is really engaging--you really do want to get in on the conversation. Anyone else going to try it--or at least skulk around a bit?

Twitter is making me mad..... I have tried to log on about 5 different times over the last two days and every time it says 'twitter is over capacity'. is this normal?

I'm having trouble with Twitter too, but am going to leave it for now and try again tomorrow. My own kids have been after me to set up a Facebook and Twitter account, so this course is my motivation to finally get that done. Am I nervous? You bet! I have enough to keep track of already, but I'm excited about the possiblities, too.

Hi all - My head is spinning from all this information, but I do believe there will be great applications for the classroom. I have checked out (a little) the #scichat idea - that is neat. I understand the scichat word, but why does it have a # in front of it? Same for edchat .. ..

The poll is a neat idea too. I can see some good application for this in environmental science. Polling the class to see what they would do in a certain situation would be interesting, since in the real world there is very often no "right" answer.

#schichat (or #edchat or #TT, etc) are all called "hashtags." The convention of using # in front of the word started quite a while ago -- it allows everyone to know the difference between a "tag" and something that is just intended as a word. FYI - A "tag" is simply a descriptor that you can add to Tweets, blog posts, posted images, etc. in order to easily sort and search.

#edchat last night was really good (how do you assess critical thinking?). Here is the archive. One word of caution the archive is very hard to follow since you are not in the moment. Twitter "chats" are generally hard to keep up with because they move fast -- you just need to skim and focus on the ideas (and people) that you want to respond to. It does take practice!

#TT is used on Tuesdays and stands for "Teacher Tuesday." Often, teachers will use #TT as a "shout out" to teachers on Twitter that they think are valuable to follow.
#FF is basically the same thing, but general across all of Twitter. It stands for Follow Friday (post the people you think others should follow).

Also, if you want to reply directly to someone, make sure you include the @ before the ID. So, if you wanted to send a public message (or response) to me, you would start @Brunsell. You can also refer to someone in a post by using @name --- So, Hey did you see what @Brunsell is making us do? If you really like something and want to share with your network, you can "ReTweet" it (just hit the retweet button or put RT at the beginning of the post.

Finally, if you want to build the number of followers you have, you do need to include a descriptive profile (NOTE: You do not have to give personal info or include a realistic image).

TWITTER OUTAGES -- As a few of you noted, Twitter has experienced a lot of outages recently. This is primarily due to the increased use from World Cup Fans. Twitter new it was coming and is trying to increase their capacity, but has stated that the next week or so could be rougher than normal. Twitter has experienced an incredibly amount of growth over the past year or so (Post-Oprah), so they do have periods where they have capacity issues.

OOPS! I forgot to actually give the #Edchat archive link.
http://edchat.pbworks.com/615+-+7PM+EDT+-+How+do+we+assess+whether+students+can+think+critically

Glad to have stumbled upon this discussion. I too find Twitter a bit overwhelming... It's alot of input and seems time consuming. I'm learning though and I'll keep an open mind.

Thanks for the Twitter explanation, it seems busy whenever I've tried so far as well. Glad to know it's not all my web illiteracy.

Just testing to see if this works. Welcome everyone!

Wow, I am feeling a little overwhelmed already! A blog? Twitter? I've heard of these things, of course, but have little idea of what they actually are. Anyone care to point me in the right direction as to where to begin?

I just set mine up (no content yet, but they exist!) and it wasn't too complicated. I followed the professor's advise and used posterous, so I just went to Posterous.com and clicked the link to create an account. same with Twitter, just go to Twitter.com and follow the directions. Then to add people to follow click search and put in their name (you can leave off the @ symbol).

I am new to blogging and twitter also. I just created a blog on blogger using our professor`s advice. Hoping to learn a lot about the webtools that I could use to help my students.

I am excited to learn about how to better utilize this technology in the classroom. I started a blog for school in February but I haven't had a chance to use it very much yet, so I am looking forward to becoming more confortable with these types of educational resources.

Where are we supposed to post the information about the blog and twitter account that we created? I found a table with other people's information, but the page wouldn't let me add to it, and it had a lot of stuff from the 2010 class, so I don't know if I was at the right spot.

Thanks!

Just got through setting up my blog through blogspot.com! Even though some of my school's colleagues have set up a blog on our teacher webpages, none of us have been using it... so I am looking forward to getting more comfortable with it this summer and share ideas :)

Ok... I've added my information and reflected on my blog on the web 2.0 stuff. Do we add a blog as an introduction to ourselves onto our blogs too?

I have also signed up to follow Carol's blog because I found it easy to comment on her blog as opposed to Amy's blog. Could that be because I use blogspot like Carol? Also, is there a way to tag the people I am talking about here so that they have an indication?

Hi all, I am getting a late start here. Have tried the twitter and facebook and though I am pretty open minded I do not like the social networking concept. I love my life and really do not care nor have the need to have students contacting me outside of school. Hmmmmm, I think this is going to be an interesting experience or should I say an experiment! ;-)

@Murray, in terms of Twitter, I don't see it as a social contact with kids (although I DO mention that they're welcome to pay attention to whatever science-related tweets I put out), as much as a way to share resources with colleagues. If they want to read those articles on pedagogy and current events in environmental science, excellent! But I've found that my seventh graders are initially surprised that I'm even on Twitter, but they lose interest when they find out I'm pretty boring and it's all teacher stuff. I have not used Facebook as a class tool.