This chapter talks about setting up and maintaining a group or professional learning community. While I think that some of us may be ready to move to this level, many of us are still in the explore/learn mode. We have spent 2 chapters exploring tools and sharing them with our group. Now it is time to explore one more tool. Let's all look at Twitter this week. For an intro, take a look at http://www.teachhub.com/why-every-teacher-should-join-twitter for some very good reasons why all teachers should be on Twitter and for links to articles on how to use Twitter in the classroom. If you unfamiliar with Twitter, take a look at https://support.twitter.com/ for all you need to know about Twitter and how to get started. If you do not have a Twitter account, go ahead and set up an account. Once you have an account, you need to choose some folks to follow. There are many ways to do this, but I think the best way to find quality folks to follow is to look at hashtags that interest you and choose others that post to these hashtags. Here is a list of 300+ hashtags to look at: http://www.cybraryman.com/edhashtags.html . Choose a few and go to the "discover" page on Twitter and search...you will see the people/groups who post to this tag and you can choose a few to follow. (My policy is that I will follow someone, but if they spend a lot of time tweeting about things that are not educationally interesting to me I will drop them without apology. For example...I heard Kevin Honeycutt speak earlier this summer. He was an excellent speaker, but he tweets about everything from what he is having for dinner, to where he is located every minute of the day. This is a waste of time, so I stopped following him pretty quickly).
Once you have chosen at least 5 people/groups to follow, start reading and learning. If you are already on Twitter, just report on the folks you already following. At the end of the week, report back to the group. What is your twitter handle? (mine is @angynorthern). Who did you choose to follow? What have you learned? How can you use this tool both professionally and in the classroom?
As we have seen during the last couple chapters, it takes a while to learn a new tool and to become comfortable using it. So...don't give up as you learn this one. Keep exploring and "lurking"...just reading posts for now. We will dive a little deeper in the next chapter.
I already use Twitter, as @nkaltenb. I started using it in the spring, with the idea of using it for my advanced French classes. I am currently following several French news sources and the president of the AATF (French teachers assoc.), plus a few personal ones just for fun (a comedian or two, members of a Chicago band my daughter and I follow). The French ones I follow are newspapers and TV channels, a French sports news source, the French diplomatic account and the Alliance Francaise of Chicago. I watch for links to articles on current events in France and retweet selected tweets about the more interesting events or about what would interest/relate to students.
ReplyDeleteAfter school begins, I will ask my third- and fourth-year students to follow my tweets and we will use the linked articles as a basis for reading & vocabulary practice and class discussion. This will connect my students to more real-world French and keep them current on what is going on in the French-speaking world.
I have also been following Kevin Honeycutt, who has slowed down on the tweets about Longhorn Steakhouse/Applebees and has seemed to limit his number of tweets per day to more technology and motivation. Maybe he is just busy doing other things, but I was beginning to reconsider following him, too, Angy! I'll give him a few more weeks, and stop following if he goes back to the superfluous tweets.
Nikki. Let me know if Kevin stays focused on education. I would love to follow him again if he can keep from sharing so much fluff.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, it must have been an anomaly around the July 4th holiday. He is back to tweeting when he gets to the airport, when he takes off, etc. It is too bad, because there are some good ideas that he passes along. Maybe you could just subscribe to his newsletter and skip the twitter feed. There is a button to subscribe to get an email when the newsletter page is updated, and that seems to be where most of his relevant links in his tweets lead anyway. The link for the newsletter is:
Deletehttp://paper.li/kevinhoneycutt/1306327724
My twitter handle is @Sandy_k_Risk. I set this up last summer but haven't been back since then. I will try it again and see what I can find.
ReplyDeleteI found this in an article this morning. It would be very useful with a class specific twitter handle
ReplyDeleteTwitter: Whether it is class homework updates, project deadlines, school news or dinnertime conversation starters, teachers are taking advantage of Twitter’s free tool and keeping parents up to date and involved in classroom happenings. In a day-in-age where most parents have cell phones, Fast Follow by Twitter becomes a simple and reliable alert system. To use it, all you need to do is setup a Twitter account and ask parents (and older students) to text Twitter’s shortcode of 40404 with the message “follow [your Twitter username].” From there, parents will start receiving all of your updates via text message in real-time.
Because I am currently using Twitter to tweet France-related news bits, I am also checking into Hootsuite to find a way to direct class-related news separately. I am hoping to be able to have students and parents follow and put them on a list for homework-/class-related tweets, but still retweet French news for upper-level students for discussion of current events in francophone countries. Parents probably don't want updates in French on what's happening in the world.
DeleteGreat information
DeleteI have been using Twitter for over a year. However I use it more than just professional development. I stay in contact with parents, I have developed a faith network, I follow Indiana sports, Colts, Duck Dynasty among other interests.
ReplyDeleteProfessionally I follow professional organizations, teachers in my school corporation, state and nationally. I follow many different educational resources. I like to go to those I follows homepage and see who they follow. I also look at the home page of those i might search through hashtags to see how long it has been since they tweeted and what did they tweet about.
At times I also use Flipboard to go to my twitter account especially if there is a tweet I want to keep. I can add it to a board in Flipboard and be able access it easily.
An example of how I used twitter and Flipboard. Sandy posted on chapter 6 a website for Evernote. So I bookmarked it to twitter, opened my Flipboard went to twitter, found where I tweeted it and then added it to my professional " magazine" now it is there for me to refer back to.
DeleteI've been exploring Twitter this week and really haven't gained much from it yet. I started following some other educators doing the flipped classroom, some calculus pages, some ed tech people, and then some health and fitness people. The tweets so far have been confusing and I haven't seen anything that would be helpful. I have gotten some good exercise tips from Fitness magazine :)
ReplyDeleteI probably need to find some better people to follow and keep exploring. I won't give up on Twitter yet, but right now I am not convinced it is something that would be helpful for me.
http://www.edudemic.com/guides/guide-to-twitter/
ReplyDeleteToday on my Twitter page this was listed. It might help for those struggling. What I like about Twitter is that most direct to a website or an article. If I dont have time to read it at the time then I will go to Flipboard and open it up there, then save it to my "Professional Growth Magazine" that I developed. Twitter is not for everyone, just like Facebook or any other social network. Traci and I were just talking last night about how over whelming it is...all the resources out there. I think that is what is great about this book. It gives us the foundation to build what WE want our networking to look like and to design it around our personal comfort and needs.
MaryRose. I have been using a Pinterest board to archive articles I want to read later. It has really helped me get more organized.
DeleteAngry last night I found a site that is new. It is similar to Pintrest but is only for teachers and educational topics. Educlipper.net
DeleteWhile I use Facebook for my personal life, I decided that Twitter would be professional only. Like I said in my introduction, I follow folks or groups that I think will benefit me professionally while not wasting my time. I try to spend less than 20 minutes a day on Twitter (and I usually meet this goal). I checked this morning, and I follow 52 people/groups and have 24 followers. I would recommend that educators follow:
ReplyDelete@INeLearn (Indiana ELearning) - this one is great to keep up on technology PD being offered throughout the state. They also have an education/technology twitter chat every Thursday evening from 8-9.
@SWJCS1 - Southwestern's school twitter. They tweet all school closing and news.
@21stCenturyTch - good educational articles. They don't tweet often, but they tweet quality.
@edutopia - good articles and lots of free giveaways. (You might need an edutopia account to see the articles, but the account is free and worth setting up).
@NMHS_Principal - tweets a lot of good technology articles/resources. He sometimes tweets location or what he is eating, but not too much time wasted. This one is worth following.
@BookBub - if you have an ereader, this one may be for you. They tweet free/cheap ebooks daily. You can go to bookbub.com to sign up for a free account. You set the genre categories you want to see and they email you a list every day.
I follow a lot of authors and publishing companies that probably wouldn't interest this group, but I love to hear about the new books coming out, books being made into movies and where to see authors in person as they tour with their new books. (I even had a twitter conversation with one of the authors the other day:)
I have been a lurker (reading but not posting very often) on Twitter for the last year or so, but now it is time for me to start posting more. My goal for the next year is to tweet/retweet something of quality at least once a week. I think the blog assignment may help me with this as I want to start blogging about the books I am reading too.
I set up a Twitter account, and I agree with Angy. I would like to keep this as a professional account, though I wouldn't be opposed to setting up a Facebook page specifically for class. I think students would be more willing to follow Twitter, though.
ReplyDeleteI have had issues with finding valuable resources. As stated in earlier posts, it's often discouraging to find out someone who should be a valuable resource prefers posting about random thoughts or feelings. Hopefully this will be a good way for students to keep up with assignments or resources for class.
Posted by Jenny Laws