Day Nineteen: Twitter

It is hard to find a good place to start this final post because Twitter can be used in so many different ways.  Let's start with....

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Educators have pretty much always functioned in isolation.  Yes, we would share with our colleagues within our school and those we met at conferences, but for the most part the things that happened in your classroom were known to only those in your immediate circle.  Twitter widens that circle, significantly.  Actually the circle is a sphere.  And that sphere is the entire world.  Through Twitter, I share ideas with educators from Indiana, Colorado, Chicago, Canada and Australia.  I can be involved in a conversation with one person from Alabama or participate in a chat with thousands of educators across the globe.  Because these conversations are not limited by the time frame of a conference, they can go on for hours or even days and involve a variety of perspectives.  Twitter has absolutely changed my life and especially my teaching;  I barely recognize the teacher I was 2 years ago (I celebrate my 2yr Twitter-versary in April!)

Why should you tweet?  The real question is why aren't you doing it already?  If someone said to you there's this amazing conference.  It has some of the best instructors in the world, educators that are leading educational reform.  It is free and located extremely close to your home.  You can go to it during school and you won't have make sub plans.  If someone said this to you, would your response be "No thanks"?  Of course not!

Let's look at it from this perspective.  Educators are constantly tweeting ideas and resources 24/7.  If you were to spend 30 minutes per week simply watching the twitter feed (the scrolling tweet of people you follow), I guarantee you will find  at least 1 new idea for your classroom.  Now if you do that for an entire year, that's 52 new ideas.  52 ways to improve as an educator and learner.  Would you ever be able to come up with 52 new ideas doing what you currently do?

Twitter:  The Basics

So hopefully I have been able to convince you to sign up.  Let's walk get you started with your account:

1. Go to Twitter.com and register.  I use Twitter almost strictly for educational purposes so I chose a name that relates to what I do (@DaretoChem).  You can something simple like your name (@reginaschaffer).  It doesn't matter what you pick, just pick something that you can identify with.
2. Don't be an egg-head.  The default picture is a white egg on a colored background and no one will follow you with this picture.  Find something that clearly shows your face and more people will want to hear what you have to "say."
3. You can follow celebrities and sports teams, but you can skip most of this.
4. Here is the tougher part:  finding people to follow.  You can only get good ideas if you find people tweeting out good ideas.  The best resource I have found is on www.cybraryman.com under his PLN All-Stars.  Here the top tweeters from each category are listed so this is the best people to start following to get ideas related to your classroom.  At the bottom of this post, I have included a Google Spreadsheet with the Middletown educators that you can follow as well.  If you sign up, please add your name to the list.

The First Tweet

Well, it's not that simple.  Before you venture out into this new social media (well, new to you), watch the following video by Josh Stumpenhorst.  Josh is the Illinois Teacher of the Year and an absolute must follow.

Like Josh, I recommend downloading a third party program like Tweetdeck or HootSuite for filtering your tweet streams.  Once you are following a number of people, twitter's website become too cumbersome.  For your first tweet, introduce yourself, say hello to the world, ask people to follow you.  Some tweeters will follow you if you follow them; others are more particular.

If you trying to find good info, you will want to search by the hashtag (#).  Here is a link to all of them that are out there for education, but below are the most popular.
#edchat is used for anything education related
#mtwnchat is for anything related to the Middletown district (March 1st at 8pm is our 1st live chat!!)
#scichat anything science related
#sschat is for social studies
#engchat is for English topics
#ntchat is focused on resources for new teachers
#edtech is for educational technology

We all know that it is important to grow as an educator.  Sure you can do this by attending yearly conferences, but if you are like me, you are starting to get bored with what you are seeing or, worse, saw it last year.  Twitter is constantly changing, constantly growing, and always current.

How You Can Use It With Your Students
While Twitter is a great resource as a professional growth tool, one of the most interesting ways that I have changed is by using it with my students.  From an informal Twitter poll, my students have said about 1/4 of the students at South are tweeting.  They are sending out messages before school, after school, during school.  They are shouting to the world their thoughts and views, and we need to know them to better meet their ever-changing needs.  If you don't believe me, check out this report from CNN.

What are you going to do with it?

To keep you thinking and give you some additional resources, here are some great links to follow:
Twitter in Education Livebinder
Everything You Need to Know About Twitter
Teaching With Twitter

And if you don't believe that Twitter can revolutionize, ask the Egyptians, Syrians, and Libya.  Oh, and after the earthquake in Haiti, Twitter was used by rescue teams to locate survivors.

Here is the Google Spreadsheet of who to follow from Middletown.  If you have a Twitter account and are not the list below, please add yourself (or fix your info as I didn't have a complete list when I made this).
You can find the spreadsheet here.