The Twitteraholic’s Ultimate Guide to tweets, hashtags, and all things Twitter. Most educators who learn to use Twitter effectively say they learn more from their personal learning network (PLN) on Twitter than they’ve achieved from any other forms of professional development or personal learning. Unfortunately educators often dismiss Twitter, or fail to see the value of Twitter, when they’re first introduced to Twitter. Our aim of this post is to provide all the information you need to learn how to use Twitter effectively as an educator.
We regularly update this post with new information. This post was last updated Oct, 2013. Click on a link below to go to the section you want to read: About the Twitter-a-holic’s Ultimate Guide The original Twitter-a-holic’s Guide was published in July, 2010 when I’d just returned from attending a large conference overseas and realized that while a conference can make you feel really overwhelmed and alone — especially amongst the 13,000 ed tech professionals participants who attend it each year — I never felt alone. Why? Back to Top 1. You’ll Never Walk Alone……..building a professional learning network with Twitter. Teachers can gain so much from colleagues working beside them - teaching tips, strategy suggestions, resource ideas, planning pointers and simply the support of another professional in talking through issues or sharing experiences from day to day. Most often these colleagues might be co-workers within the same school.
But in some schools there may only be a small staff, there may be no other colleagues teaching similar ages or curricular areas for the same age-group. And, of course, in the busy day to day life of schools the time when you have opportunity to reflect on what you are trying to do, or to ask advice, or to look for resources on an unfamiliar topic, will be when you are finished for the day and are at home preparing for the next day on your own. A tool which makes building a personal learning network very easy is Twitter. Pernille Ripp has created a short video explaining what Twitter has meant for many teachers around the world.
22 Effective Ways To Use Twitter In The Classroom. Using Twitter in the classroom is a no-brainer. It’s a powerful and free tool that already has wide adoption among educators, students, administrators, and parents. So how do you effectively use Twitter to resonate with students? Why not start by using the following methods that are organized by Bloom’s Taxonomy? The below visual showcases a variety of cases that should be of use for any teacher looking to effectively integrate Twitter into courses, lessons, projects, etc. What if you could use your favorite social network in the classroom? That’d be the cat’s pajamas. (For our many international readers not familiar with that term, it simply means ‘that’d be great.’) You can actually use Twitter with Bloom’s Taxonomy thanks to this below table built by TeachBytes . Why Restrict Who You Follow? The iPad and Twitter Revisited | dedwards.me.
It’s a question that I have pondered over recent weeks. There is a growing trend for people to ‘cull’ the amount of people they follow on twitter. Why do they do it? Context is required here. During my early twitter use, I was the first person to become frustrated by a timeline filled too quickly. The need to see every tweet, in case it was the most important thing in the world, led to me unfollowing anyone who tweeted more than once every couple of hours! After realising I didn’t need to see every tweet, I wrote a piece about how a learning network could be developed with the use of an iPad and twitter: ‘We are all learning together. Learning has always been based on exposure to new stimuli, research and communication. I, like many others, signed up to twitter as it seemed the pertinent thing to do. If I’m honest, I didn’t understand and didn’t make the effort to try. For twitter to work you need to follow the right people. Tweeting as a Professional Development Tool - Blog.
IRIS Connect sponsored the MirandaNet lounge at this year’s BETT event. Whilst there, we had the chance to see several informative presentations and debates by different education professionals, ranging from the use of technology for collaboration, to visions for the future of learning. Two talks that we found particularly interesting were by Andy Mellor and Matt Pearson on the topic of using Twitter as a tool for Continuous Professional Development.
We all know that CPD isn’t an end to itself; it’s about continually improving yourself and your practice through professional growth. But how can Twitter help you do that? We’ve put together a few tips and ideas that we took away from Matt and Andy’s presentations, take a look. Confirm your ideas Twitter is a great way to find out how others have dealt with a certain situations and to check that you’re going about things in the right way. Challenge yourself Be enlightened Every visit to twitter will reveal something new. Have you heard of the MFL Twitterati? « Network for Languages London. The mainstream media often portray Twitter as a sensationalist vehicle for attention-seeking celebrities to broadcast the trivial minutiae of their everyday lives.
This is a shame I feel as in my humble opinion, the social networking site is in fact the most powerful tool for improving teachers’ professional development there has ever been … ever … and it’s free! Does this news sell papers though? Probably not! I personally don’t care what Jonathan Ross has for breakfast or how many million followers Lady Gaga has which is why I don’t follow them on Twitter. In 2007, when I joined Twitter, the number of language teachers from the UK using the service were few and far between. Described by some as ‘the best MFL staffroom in the world‘, the MFL Twitterati has proved to be an invaluable professional and personal support for many of its members some of whom say they couldn’t now imagine teaching without it!
Written by: joe. Twitter as CPD | ilovemathsgames. A Comprehensive Index to Educational Hashtags Teachers Must Know about. If you are still trying to figure out what educational hashtags teachers are using then you do not need to go anywhere else, I got it covered here thanks to Chiew Pang document. Pang created an open document using Google Docs and named it " The Unofficial Index to Twitter Hashtags ". I have gone thorough the entire page and found it really helpful so I thought you might want to have a look as well. See also : Teacher's Guide to The Use of Hashtags in Education Here is the link for the entire document that Pang created and below are the hashtags it contains. Teachers – The 10 Stages of Twitter. Stage 1 Sign up to twitter following persuasion/pestering by colleagues. Follow Stephen Fry, a famous sportsman/popstar and a news channel. Read a few tweets, don’t understand what the fuss is about and mock anyone who uses twitter.
Stage 2 Overhear colleagues chatting about twitter and a great article they found. Promise to give it a go again and follow two or three recommendations. Find articles interesting and wonder how to get more. Stage 3 Think about posting first tweet. Stage 4 Upon realising you have no followers ask colleagues how to get them? Stage 5 Have a mini twitter conversation with colleague, even retweet a couple of statements. Stage 6 Practise a couple of tweets that include @names and hashtags. Stage 7 Retweet any link you find interesting as people might read them.
Stage 8 Thank colleagues for introducing you to twitter, impressed with the knowledge you have gleaned and your growing number of followers. Stage 9 Stage 10 (the reason for this post) Like this: Like Loading... The language of Twitter: the rise of MFL teachers online | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional. Ever since I was first inspired by the power of technology for enhancing language learning, I've been passionate about connecting with similar enthusiastic educators.
Starting my blog Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom in 2006 and posting about my own and others' adventures in and out of the classroom with web 2.0 tools proved to be a great way of drawing people in, building a community and sharing ideas. The Isle of Wight Conferences I organised from 2006 to 2008 focused on innovative uses of ICT in MFL and helped colleagues from all over the country to meet face to face and make deeper connections with each other as a result.
Joining Twitter in 2007 made it easier to interact on a more regular basis not only with the growing numbers of language teachers interested in innovative use of ICT in their teaching, but also helped me get to know the wider edtech community. It's not all virtual sharing of course. But does all this tweeting affect what goes on in the classroom? 25 Ways To Use Twitter In The Classroom. Twitter in Education – Barriers and possible solutions? After a wry commentary on the ‘10 Stages of Twitter‘ many educators have commented on the barriers that exist to twitter use. As a proposed channel of communication for iPad use in school, it is important to investigate these barriers and address them for staff. ACCESS – It is all very well popping onto twitter if you have a smartphone that allows you access with one tap of an icon. It is a very different experience if you are logging in via the website just to scroll through a timeline you don’t engage withUNDERSTANDING – Twitter fans have countless tales to tell about colleagues who ‘don’t get twitter’.
It is a difficult medium to explain sometimes, even though its simplicity is its strength. A virtual chat with people you have never met is alien to some, particularly those who use Facebook as a measuring tool. Friends on Facebook have a link that suggests a reason for communication. Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: 6 Tips Teachers Should Be Able to Do on Google Docs. Following the Google Docs guides I have been posting here, I received several other tips to add to these guides. I know it is impossible for me to cover all the details of these web services but some of these tips are really important and should not pass incognito. As I told you before, this blog is a fruit of a collaborative work between me and you and I do learn a lot from you as you do from me.
Now here is a round-up of the new hacks you can do on Google Docs\ Drive. 1- Preview Docs A couple of months ago, Google Drive introduced the option of previewing your docs before you open, share or download them. 2- Open Word docs files in Google Docs To open a Word document ( Docx) that is uploaded in your Google Drive all you have to do is tick the box next to it , right click on the file name, select " open with " then click on " open with Google Drive " 5- Create a PDFs from your docs To create a PDF using Google drive all you need to do is to click on " create" , "select document".