I've had a Twitter account for some time, but rarely use it. I've always found it unorganized and hard to follow. Too difficult to keep up with conversations. With Facebook and Instagram, I'm able to be more organized, or so I thought. So I created a new (third) Twitter account, hoping that I'll be able to use it effectively to manage my teaching resources. I'm really excited to see how this will work for me professionally.
My task beyond that was to enhance my learning network, and I chose to use Feedly and Google+. Never used either of these in my life, so this was bound to get interesting. Feedly is super cool and a great tool for looking at everything in one place! I simply used my Google email to start and I was immediately able to add extra resources. Keeping them on separate feeds is really great too. I was surprised to see how many posts per week some of these webpages create. I also really like the "save for later" option. When you're busy or in a rush, but looking for something specific, you can bookmark things to check out later when you have more time.
The final step was creating a Google+ community. It took some getting used to navigating Google+ and understanding what it's all about. But really, it's highly connected to other social media outlets (particularly Youtube). That makes it easy to share, easy to find people, and easy to stay connected with specific people/groups you find particularly great or useful. Through Google+ I have already found a really cool teacher who posts YouTube videos for teachers on a regular basis. I started a community and shared a few resources to it; I also found a few really good teacher help communities and posted to them to ask for any first-time Google+ tips or first time teaching tips.I also easily shared my Google+ community onto my Twitter and Facebook accounts.
I can tell that this will be a great way to connect, especially once I get into my field and am able to share with other teachers that I've met in person. Overall, both of these amazing resources will be great for use in the future. I plan to keep them updated and gain as many followers and community members as possible so that I can gain more resources to aid my teaching!
