Let me explain. You see, when using Twitter one simply signs up for an account and then "follows" people using the "Follow" button. It is a simple process and when you decide to follow someone, whatever they tweet (post) or retweet will show up in your feed.People are then able to follow you and see whatever you decide to tweet or retweet. I have my account set on private, meaning in order for people to follow me they must have my permission. Note that this does not prevent me from following other people. As you can see from this picture, I currently have 14 pending requests to follow me!
The only bad thing about my account being on private is that it makes it more difficult to communicate with people if they do not follow me. Despite this, I personally like this private setting as it keeps the number of those that see my information smaller.
But how does this all tie into professional development? Twitter is actually a great resource for connecting with other educators. It also gives you the opportunity to not only see what they are doing in their own classrooms, but also ask other people for their opinion or advice on anything.
You can ask someone for their opinion by directly tweeting at them, or even direct messaging them if they follow you. If you want to communicate with multiple people, you even have the ability to use a hashtag.
Hashtags are keywords that have this, #, symbol in front of them. They are clickable and take you to other people that have communicated using that same hashtag. Here is an article that shows you multiple educational hashtags. The article even explains in more depth how to use them.
I am interested and often follow the #edtech hashtag because I really enjoy seeing how other educators incorporate technology in their classrooms. It is also a great way to find out about new and upcoming technology and specific applications that might be relevant to my future students.
If you are just now setting up a Twitter account as an educator, I strongly recommend you "follow" edutopia. Without a doubt, they are my favorite account to follow as they have a lot of current and pertinent information when it comes to eduction.From this picture you can see that I often "retweet" edutopia. I do this in order to be able to go back to the information or articles that they have shared. I also want other people that follow me to see this information. This allows even more people to see whatever information I am retweeting. A lot of the time, people gain followers after being retweeted.
If you don't want to retweet the information to your followers you can also simply "heart" the tweet which will save it to your likes. This is also a great way to keep track of articles or tweets that you have enjoyed.
I also follow teachers sharing information from their individual classrooms! This is another great way to get ideas and see how activities have worked for them. Catherine Reed is one individual that is a 1st grade teacher that I enjoy following.
Twitter isn't something that only educators can use! I strongly believe it can be used in the classroom as well. With younger students, perhaps you can simply show them how the program works and have a class Twitter account to share what they have been working on. This could be something that you share with parents and follow other classrooms across the nation.
For older students, there are many, many ways to implement the tool. I love this visual that incorporates Bloom's Taxonomy when using Twitter. I would love to use some of these ideas in the future and get students excited about what they are learning.
I personally love using Twitter as a professional development tool. But don't just take my word for it! Here is an article by the National Education Association talking about how tweeting can help your classroom.
References
[Picture of twitter user] retrieved from https://twitter.com/_MeganArnold
[Picture of retweet] retrieved from https://twitter.com/_MeganArnold
[Picture of blooms] retrieved from https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/22-ways-to-use-twitter-for-learning-based-on-blooms-taxonomy
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