Will Tweeting Really Help My Teaching?

There has been a lot of frustration this week with Twitter, I'm still unsure what my exact plan for it is, but I'm starting to see how it would come in handy in extending my PLN. I've gotten some good links off people's tweets, and living in the remote mountains of NC, I have to admit its kind of making me feel a little more connected to other educators out there. For example, it's neat to get updates from people that are gearing up to go to the NECC conference. It kinda makes you feel like you're "in the loop".

Best advice I've read about Twitter this week: "If you find someone's updates to not be useful or be plain annoying, stop following them- you're in control!"

Twitter has earned some brownie points in my heart, whether it would be an efficient use of my teaching/ learning time, I still have to see. Here are some positives, a shout-out to Eric for his link to the Tweeting Your Way to Better Grades article and to Randy for providing the article about whether tweeting can help your teaching (full article here) a lot of these come from there:

• Simple, good tool for teachers open to online PLNs but not tech savvy
• Great to find mentors and keep up with latest trends in education
• Send review statement about a lesson, reminders to students about homework, sneak peeks about the following lesson, etc.
• Tweet review questions
• Direct students to useful/ follow up websites to use for homework or prepare for next lesson
  
• Share interesting things that happen in your lesson/ best practice ideas with other teachers
  
• Get students opinions about specific topics/ use as an opinion poll
• Communicate with experts in your field/ related to the topic you're covering
  
• Ask students provocative questions that will cause them to think about your subject outside class or use provocative question as primer for following lesson
• Encourage discussion and collaboration between your students and other students elsewhere
• Much quicker than blogging so it takes little time, teachers and students with limited time in their hands are more likely to use it
• Carry out book or article discussions with your students
• Keep up with latest news in your field of interest
• Students can set up virtual study rooms, offer each other support and share resources
  

A teacher from the UK posted this piece with 9 Great Reasons Why Teachers Should Use Twitter. For those of you who want a quickie summary in her words:

Together we're better

Global or local- you choose

Self awareness and reflective practice

Ideas workshop and sounding board

Newsroom and Innovation Showcase

Professional Development and critical friends

Quality-assured searching

Communicate, communicate, communicate

Getting with the times has never been easier.

Here are some other resources I found interesting:

Twitter is Messy (advice for skeptics)
25 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in Your Classroom (some very original ideas you can actually put into practice in your own classroom)
Twitter- A Teaching and Learning Tool

Neat idea based on one given in 25 Interesting Ways...: Have students create an account with a username based on a scientist (eg. @darwin, @darwinswife, @wallace) and have them discuss a topic of the time through tweets.

Getting More out of Twitter

While trying to figure out how to use Twitter these past couple of days, I came across a few things that I found useful, thought I'd share...

I connected with this edtech specialist/ teacher in England (@tombarrett) after I read his name on the 10 teacher list above. He sent me a link to his blog, which is really neat, featuring an article called 5 Things to Get your Twitter Network Off the Ground. Here is the summary:

1. Complete your profile to help others know who is requesting to follow them or who they may be interested in following.
   
2. Dive right in.
   
3. Follow a bunch of people with similar professional interests (eg. whose blog you may have enjoyed reading)
4. Piggyback off someone with a large network by asking them to put out a good word for you, so you can get some exposure.
5. Reply to people (use the @ followed by their username in the tweet), it gets you more engaged.

Here is a list of 10 Teachers to follow on Twitter (from Free Tech for Teachers)

Ways to Find Teachers on Twitter (from Free Tech for Teachers):

1. Twitter 4 Teachers wiki: "The Twitter 4 Teachers PB Wiki was started by ed tech specialist Gina Hartman. This wiki is organized content teaching area so that visitors can connect with Twitter users who teach the same subject(s). "
2. Educators on Twitter is a Google Docs Spreadsheet started by Liz B. Davis. The list is constantly growing as new additions are added almost daily.
3. Twitter for Teachers "is a wiki started by Rodd Lucier with the purpose of educating teachers about the use of Twitter as an educational tool and as a professional development tool. You may want to check out who the contributors to the wiki are and follow them. Rodd has also produced a great video demonstrating how to use Twitter, Delicious, and Google Reader to find more Twitter users of interest to you. "
4. Jane Hart, founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, has compiled a list of nearly 800 educators on Twitter. Each entry is accompanied by a short summary about the Twitter user.
   
5. Twitter search. Located at the bottom of the Twitter page is a search link. Try searching for key words commonly used in educational technology. Then follow the Twitter users who are writing messages containing those key terms.

Want a Twitter button for your blog? Find a free one here, there are tons of options! All you have to do is add it to your blog as a Picture Gadget, then create a link from the picture to your twitter profile page.

Some great tips on how to use Twitter are found on the Twitter help page, for example... If you type in GET username, it retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person.

The Brain Behind Twitter

I don't know anything about Twitter, just created an account a couple of days ago and haven't touched it since because it seems really annoying. Hopefully with Twitter as part of the focus for the upcoming week in WebTools for Teachers, I will learn more about it any learn to appreciate the Twitter for the revolution it has created. Maybe I will even become a convert by the end of the week, who knows...

I stumbled across this video on a different page. It's a TED speech given by the brain behind Twitter (who also happens to be the one of the people who started Blogger): Evan Williams. It is not the most exciting speech on the net right now, but it gives an interesting background of how Twitter came about and how it grew. If you get bored of it after a few minutes, watch the next video below that follows, it's pretty funny...



This video is titled "How Twitter Ruined My Life".
Warning: some of the content might be offensive to some readers.