Networking and Twitter

In my previous blog posting a talked about three simple ways for educators to share.  One of the simplest and most rewarding ways to share twitter.com.  The reason I think it is simple is because you can only type so many characters.  This means  you do not have to spend much time working on a "tweet."

To get started go to twitter.com and register for an account.  After this it is important to think about what twitter should be used for.  There are many uses: to get as many followers as possible, to follower as many people as possible, or to learn.  I prefer to use twitter to learn.

To start off I think it is important to follow the correct people.  If you are a teacher I suggest following other teachers.  I am currently following a professor that I had for my graduate work (@kthompso).  He is a great source for me via twitter on many instructional technology issues.  Another person that I follow is someone I met on a car forum.  He is a computer teacher at a school in New Jersey.  These two people have been a great source for me.  They both share the same goals as I do in an overall sense.  I suggest finding people that have the same goals as you and follow them.

Posting material can be intimidating at first.  The information you give is public and anyone can view it (unless you set up privacy to not allow that).  What is posted needs to be relevant in order to build a network.  The things that are easiest to post are articles that are interesting or pertain to a common interest that are shared with followers.  It would also be interesting a quick story about something that happened in your day to keep it personal.  Whatever is posted should be relevant to your network of followers.

Speaking of networks, twitter is a great networking tool.  Twitter allows people from all over the world to be connected to each other and learn from each other.  Networks can be people that interact in a physical sense and people that interact virtually.  As an instructor I find it important to network with coworkers and teachers around the world.  It helps to sharpen my abilities by having a large group to bounce ideas off of people.  Keeping the network going is key to success.

Didn't your mother teach you to...

Share!



Educators have been known to borrow from each other all the time.  I think that if you are an educator and you are not borrowing then you are not thinking outside of the box enough.  It is really easy to take another teacher's idea and turn it into your own.  What should you do in return?  Share what works for you!

Here are some ways to share:

• Blog

Blogging is easy and it's free!  You can share some ideas that you have been using for years.  Why not let your fellow teachers know what motivates your students?  This is why I've been trying to blog more.  There's plenty of free sites to choose from.  I use this Blogspot because of how easily it integrates with my google account.  Blogging can be fun, be sure to follow fellow educators.  Start by following me!

• Use a Wiki

What better way to share than a wiki?  I have worked on a few projects with my team on a wiki before and learned so much from each other.  We were able to use our strengths together and make a great product for our students.  What I really imagine is a bunch of teachers working together to put a bunch of useful resources in a wiki and just keep adding to it.  Just think you won't have to pay for lessonplans.com anymore.  (I'm not sure if that's a real website)

• Tweet

A lot of the latest things I've been trying out have come from someone I'm following on twitter.com  It's free to set up an account and you can follow anyone.  The best thing is if you don't have time to blog you can just tweet a short line here or there and learn and grow that way.  There are countless times that I needed information and I asked my followers for an answer and I got one soon.  

For a lot of people these three things are common sense but for those of you that are just now hearing about this I encourage you to try just one thing today.  Signing up for twitter.com would be easiest (in my opinion) and you can start following me @treese83

It's been awhile...

It has been awhile since I have posted anything new.  There is a reason for that.  I have started a new job at Florida Virtual School.  It has been a great learning experience to switch gears to a full time online only instructor.  There are many differences.  I do not wish to get into a virtual versus brick and mortar discussion, rather I wanted to discuss some of the differences in case anyone is interested.


The first major difference is that with virtual school there is no "off" position.  My students are constantly submitting work every day.  At my old position when I went home from work I could mentally shut down for the day and relax.  Now, I could theoretically work all day, every day.  There is always something to do at FLVS.


Secondly, I feel a stronger connection with my students at FLVS.  This is hard to believe but I spend more time building relationships with individual students at FLVS.  I really enjoy chatting with my students and helping them with their choices in life and sometimes we just chat.  It is really refreshing for my students to be able to speak to me and not be rushed (that's what they tell me).  The one on one aspect of virtual school is great.  


Lastly, (for this blog at least) I miss co-workers.  At a brick and mortar school I could go and chat with my neighbor.  At FLVS we do have a large list of people on instant messenger that I chat with but it's hard to build a co-worker relationship.  FLVS just had their annual conference and I did get to meet my team which was great!  I hope that I can start meeting up a lot more often.


This is just the tip of the iceberg and I am writing this while I watch the Dolphins v Jets game so I'm a little distracted but I think this summarizes some main points right now.  Ask questions and I will try my best to answer them.