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