Educating Educators (and Administrators) on Twitter Use

I am looking to put together a presentation/PD experience for my administration and teachers on how Twitter can be used to enhance their learning and to create their own professional network. Being somewhat new to this myself, I am looking for ways others have gone about explaining and demonstrating the use.

When I was first shown the power of twitter it was by someone who had THOUSANDS of followers. He could say "say hello to ___" and the tweets would roll in. I don't have that and want to find a way to demonstrate the connections that can be made in Twitter.

Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

Thanks.

Tags: pd, pln, professionaldevelopment, twitter

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Permalink Reply by Amanda Kenuam on April 28, 2010 at 9:18am

This might help - 3 Professional Networks Every Educator Should Join

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Rita Oates on April 28, 2010 at 10:06am

Look for pubilcations and groups and associations that tweet and provide great info for a targeted audience. For example, Educational Leadership magazine, from ASCD, had this tweet today:
Ed_Leadership EL challenges Newsweek's controversial story with "The Key To Changing the Teaching Profession." Read our Perspective: http://bit.ly/dhcAws

Also, if you were at a conference and heard a speaker you enjoyed, you might see whether he or she tweets and add that to your list. Educators can follow other educators to create their own professional learning network. Lots of people follow Dr. Howie DiBlasi after hearing him talk about transformational leadership or "You Be The Change" or seeing his favorite websites. He is @hdiblasi. In PA, Jim Gates has terrific tweets. @jgates513 He's one of the ed tech gurus for the state.

Personally, I also want a global perspective, so I am following some interesting people from Wales, Brazil, Lebanon, Spain, and other places...all people I have never met, but who provide very interesting insights and comments and links ot great info. I have followers from around the world too, which is fascinating!

Companies are also tweeting. So you can learn news about companies, contests, free offerings, etc.
Here's one today from BrainPOP:
brainpop ISTE-goers: SIGN UP BY MAY 1 to attend our sessions w/Robert Miller, Adina Popa, & Kari Stubbs. Find out more: http://bit.ly/9IQsE7

My company, ePals, is trying to get teachers to enter a contest and tweeted:
epals: Submit your best ePals projects to our Teacher Ambassadors Contest. Your work could be featured at ISTE 2010! http://bit.ly/baGDVa

Finally, I thought it would be interesting to ask the teacher here what she ended up with:
RT @langwitches: 5th graders and I are brainstorming HOW they will use a classroom twitter account. Give them some of your ideas. Please RT

I think it's flashy to have lots of people to respond to "say hello" but it's really more powerful to learn from others.
p.s. I'm @ritaoates

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Permalink Reply by Jon Freer on April 29, 2010 at 6:30am

Thank you for this response. I absolutely needed to change my approach to this from "flashy" to seeing the powerful connections. Thanks for that reminder and the great links

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Permalink Reply by E Cohen on April 29, 2010 at 10:03am

My 5th grade students and I just started using Twitter a couple of weeks ago. For now, we just pick one person per day who will be the designated twitterer. That person just tweets at will about what we're up to at the moment in class. Eventually we will do more with it, but for now, I am just warming them up to the idea of communicating with outside experts and breaking down the walls of the school (We've only had 1 to 1 laptops for a few weeks).

You can follow us @mrcohensclass

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Permalink Reply by Vicky Phillips on August 20, 2010 at 11:42am

Hi Jon,

I have used the following wiki source and found it helpful from the angle of how to build a professional network or following as a teacher with twitter: http://ipl.ci.fsu.edu/community/wiki/index.php/Twitter_as_a_Tool_fo...

Hope this helps
Vicky Phillips

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Permalink Reply by Matt Gleeson on January 13, 2011 at 4:56am

I wrote this blog for harm reduction educators/drug and alcohol workers, about the use of Twitter to share learning obtained at conferences. Hope it is helpful. http://stonetreeaus.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/drugs-conferences-twit...

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Permalink Reply by Fred Ravan on January 15, 2011 at 7:49am

I ran across this blog this morning. http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/01/teaching-with-twitter.html

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Permalink Reply by Shelby Clarke on April 9, 2013 at 5:51pm

Twitter helps you to be connected to people whose learning and background differs from your own. It can bring you into contact with new ideas and help you become aware of new things.

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Permalink Reply by Thomas J. Hall III on April 9, 2013 at 5:54pm

One way that you can implement this into a classroom, is open it up for the more "technologically sound" parent to follow the twitter feed for the classroom. You can keep them up to date with the classroom going-on's, as well as send out reminders for when big assignments, or major events are due.