Spotlight on Strategies
For Teachers
Twitter 101
Background
Twitter is a valuable tool to build your personalized learning network (PLN) and create your own professional development as an educator. Your time, your needs - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Twitter is a free social networking tool with a user friendly interface to send and read short 140-character text messages called "tweets". Twitter is an online gathering place for a huge number of educators of all levels. Before you know it you will have connections with fellow educators around the world and become part of today's globalization movement. You will exchange learning and teaching strategies, expand your knowledge base on areas of your choosing and best of all grow professionally.
Example
- Sign up for an account to use only as your PLN and for professional growth
- Choose your name wisely; it should describe you and yet be unique and be relatively short
- Check your email to confirm your Twitter account
- Click the gear icon in the upper right corner to edit your profile and settings
- Connecting is important; keep your tweets public but turn off the tweet location
- Create your bio in 160 characters or less; fellow educators need to know something about you and your interests and area of teaching to decide to follow you
- And most important of all... break out of your egg and post a profile picture
Twitter for Teachers
Challenge
Mini-challenges to get you started tweeting and connecting
- #1 - Begin by searching and following 5-10 people that you find interesting and inspiring in your field of education. Think about people you admire, have heard at conferences, authors of your favorite edu blogs or books, etc.
- #2 - Search Twitter for a teaching strategy or subject area that interests you. You will be surprised by the amount of information you find. You may find some new connections as well.
- #3 - It's ok to "lurk" at first, but then jump in and post your first tweet or respond to a tweet and begin a connection. Make your tweet educationally relevant or post something about your work life. Don't try to read everything, especially if you follow more than 10 people. Just remember, you don't have to read it all!
- #4 - Participate in a Twitter chat. Here is a chat list and schedule created by @cybraryman1 Twitter Chats You can find almost any type of educational chat - by subject area, grade level, state chats, technology area (BYOD), administrator chats, etc.
Twitter: Yours to discover