I've twitter, do you?

For those of you that haven’t heard of this you’re not alone. Until I was asked to complete this mod in my grad class I had no idea what twitter was either. According to Wikipedia Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates or tweets. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The best part these text-based posts are limited to 140 characters in length. Short, quick and to the point.

I could totally see this technology being used as a communication tool with all of the college classes I teach. Imagine the possibilities.....one mass text to all your students at once; I could let my students know of a change in homework assignment, room assignments, that I was stuck in traffic or that class was canceled with a few strokes of my keyboard. This tool could really help keep the lines of communication open.

Bloglines - The newest tool for teachers

I’m not feeling the “love” for this RSS feed tool yet, but I’m keeping an open mind. I found a very interesting article in one the sleep blogs I follow. The post is titled Less REM sleep linked to children and teens being overweight you can find it at http://sleep.scoop0901.net/ According to a report in the Archives of General Psychiatry teens who get less sleep may be more likely to be overweight. The obesity rate has more than tripled among children six-to-11 years in the past 30 years, and approximately 17 percent of U.S. adolescents are now overweight or obese. In a nut shell the study compared children at a normal weight, with those that were overweight, after adjusting for other misc. related factors, the study concluded that one hour less of total sleep was associated with two-fold increased odds of being overweight and one hour less of REM sleep was associated with three-fold increased odds. I'm hoping to use this article as an example to mys students on how sleep disorders can be avoided if proper education is given to parents, and teens regarding the need for good sleep hygiene.