A description about the @MZimmer557 Twitter account

1. 4. Michael Zimmer - @MZimmer557:
The second educational Twitter account I chose to follow from the options in the video
was that of Michael Zimmer, a high school curriculum and assessment coordinator in Kentucky.
The video described him as an expert on using technology in the classroom, and he formerly
taught social studies, which is my emphasis. At first, I did not really like following this account,
because I was unsure of what most of his tweets were about. Eventually, though, as I kept
observing, I realized he was tweeting about great tips for teachers about simple forms of
technology that were often new to me. His tweets were not very original, however, as almost
every tweet that talked about technology linked to a blog by a man named Richard Byrne. The
blog was extremely useful, though, and Byrne wrote many helpful articles about commonly
unknown online resources teachers can use to manage a classroom more easily or increase their
students’ learning. I found it a little odd that almost all of Michael’s tweets simply linked to blog
posts from Byrne’s blog rather than his own knowledge. Since the video that recommended him
said he was highly knowledgeable about technology, so I figured the tweets would mostly
contain his thoughts and tips. Regardless of whose thoughts were in each tweet, though, the
information that was provided on this Twitter account was still tremendously helpful and
interesting. Many of the tweets I found intriguing were about the simple tools that many teachers
do not know about. For example, on March 13, he tweeted about a simple way to create
educational videos through a stop-motion website, and on March 20 he posted information about
how someone can track a hashtag across different social media platforms by using a certain
website. His tweets about the “Five Common Mistakes Made When Starting a Classroom Blog”
and how to use Google Maps to visit famous landmarks were very interesting to me as a future
history teacher, because I want to utilize both of these outlets to further my students’ education.
As we have learned in class, tests and quizzes are not the best way to assess students in the 21st
century, so I was excited to find a tweet about different review games teachers could create in
order to assess students in a fun way. On April 22, Michael tweeted about a really fascinating
website called lingua.ly that helps people who are learning a language. The website provides
short news articles in the target language, and by double clicking on unknown words, it translates
the word to English and adds it to a personalized word bank. Since one of the pillars of 21st
century learning involved bringing foreign languages into the classroom, I thought this website
would be a great way for students to learn several new foreign words while also learning about
world events. Overall, I thought this Twitter account was very interesting once I observed it
more closely, and I hope to use many of the simple technological devices that Michael tweeted
about in my future classroom.