Five Minutes of Twitter A Day

If someone stacked a pile of books, magazines, and newspapers in front of me and said, 'You've got 5 minutes, Go!', I'd be hard pressed to do them justice.  But if I find myself with 5 minutes during the day and my iPad or phone nearby, I can be guaranteed to get my money's worth of info! Today I did just that, this time with my laptop.  I started a timer and jumped on to Twitter.  My topic of curiosity for the day was digital learning with a focus on Assistive Technology. In the first 4 minutes I selectively skimmed over 40 tweets and links. For the last minute, I favourited, copied and pasted, added to Delicious and re-skimmed my top 5.   Here's what I found.

http://www.teachsmart.org/ A cool device named Tap-it.

http://goo.gl/4413wk

http://teachingeverystudent.blogspot.ca/2015/07/does-assistive-technology-make.html Great blog article by Karen Janowski posted today about the differences assistive technology can make. Excellent examples across grades of situations we see in all classrooms.

http://paper.li/bwwojci/1361415475?edition_id=2e4d61b0-30e7-11e5-a22c-0cc47a0d164b#!technology A link to #atchat weekly, just filled with great articles from which I chose....

http://bdmtech.blogspot.ca/2014/02/whats-on-my-ipad-assistive-apps-i-use.html Apps to assist dyslexic students. Great list!

http://paper.li/markwcarbone/1343530609?edition_id=a059ca10-32d5-11e5-96e1-0cc47a0d1605#!technology The iPad 3 release date has been delayed!

http://goo.gl/6c7BwE

While the last one is not so AT related, I did spend 30 seconds of my time thinking about paper.li and trying to decide whether I am a fan of this convention that is often seen in Twitter. I have since done a little more research....at least 3 more minutes, and have found this description, 'Paper.li is a content curation service that lets you turn socially shared content into beautiful online newspapers and newsletters.' Decision made...I like it. It is another time saver for me.

This was a great excercise in metacognition, it made me think about how I am learning.  From this I have new conclusions.  1) I need to make better use of bookmarking tools.  2)  I should emphasize skim reading more in my class next year.  3)  There are many assistive technology tools out there I haven't seen yet. 4) It is important to carefully choose who you follow on twitter.  5) I'm a current fan of paper.li.
Those are a lot of take-aways from a 5 minute excercise.  I highly recommend it!