dotEPUB — download any webpage as an e-book The Twitter Tool I Can't Do Without As a teenager it is always good to earn some extra money to buy the clothes and gadgets that the allowance your parents provide just won’t stretch to. Peter, a friend of mine and I decided to look for some holiday work to top up our meager income. He had some contacts in a local steel plant that was offering some holiday shift work that paid well. The only challenge was that it was a 12 hour night shift. On taking the job I was given the task to sit on the other side of a machine that chopped large pieces of metal into smaller pieces of metal. Task two was stacking those small pieces of metal into piles on a pallet. This was brain numbing. I also had an insight about my future career path and it was “not” going to be in a steel fabrication factory! Twitter can be tedious When I started with Twitter it was great to see people start to retweet my content. The problem is that this can take a lot of time and it is tedious. So I had to find an answer to the question. It serves three purposes.
L4LTV Launches - Online CPD by Teachers for Teachers Learn 4 Life (L4LTV) is a new web-TV service for the education community, filling the gap left with the demise of Teacher’s TV. Learn 4 Life aims to provide updates on pedagogy and practice in education – documenting what is happening in teacher communities in the UK and sharing it in an easily accessible manner. The channel is the brainchild of Leon Cych (@eyebeams) who has a wealth of experience of filming Teachmeets and other educational conferences. L4LTV officially launched last night with their first live broadcast, a very interesting look at Gaming in Education. You can also keep tabs on what they do by downloading the L4L iPhone app (IOS for now, Android coming soon). It’s a very exciting project, and I wish Leon and his team all the very best of luck with it. You can find the channel at
3 Great Twitter Tools for Teachers Twitter is definitely one of the best social media outlets for teachers professional development. I have written a lot on the role of Twitter in education and you can check Twitter for Teachers section here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning to learn more. However, and as I always reiterate, Twitter is only powerful if you use the right tools with it. 1- Twibes Twibes is a great tool to enhance students collaboration on Twitter. 2- Hark Hark is the world’s platform for sound bites, where anyone can discover, create, play and share their favorite audio moments anywhere on any device through digital embedding, or via social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Twijector is a free online service for webcasting tweets regarding various events.
What if…? Here are some questions that I have been pondering lately in thinking about great organizations and administration. What if we believed that everything that we had to make great schools was already within our organization and we just need to develop and share it? What if schools always focused on the notion that we should all be “learners” as opposed to “students”? What if we did not only promote “risk-taking” to our staff and students, but modelled it openly as administrators? What if we hired people that did not look at teaching as a “career” but a “passion”? What if we wanted everyone to pursue their dreams in our organization, not only our students? What if we focused on connecting and learning both globally and locally? What if people were always our first focus as opposed to “stuff”? If these questions were a focus, what do you think schools would look like? What are your “what if’s”?
6 Powerful Tools to Find Your Customers on Twitter Finding customers can involve attending networking events where everyone grabs their 100 business cards, puts on their best suit or “business hunting outfit” and then lurks at the back of the cocktail party ready to pounce after surveying their prey from a safe distance. You can always “hope” that the person you buttonhole will tolerate your witty, clever banter and that they will be interested in what you have to say about you, your company or your product. If you are lucky you may meet 2-3 people and it will be hit and miss whether they are interested. Now face to face business networking certainly still has its place but there are ways to make it more efficient and effective Find Your Prospects On-line There is a better way to do this and it involves technology and it enables you to take your stalking on-line that removes the uncomfortable tension of that cocktail party. Two Ways to Find your Target Keyword, Phrase or TagCategory 6 Twitter Tools 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Which one do you use?
The Standards | General Teaching Council for Scotland Uses for the Standards Depending on your role in education, you may have different uses for the Standards. Take a look at the information outlining these uses. Find out more Learning for Sustainability Learning for Sustainability is integral to the GTCS Professional Standards Framework. Find out more Reflective Questions Have a look at the Reflective Questions, which can be used to help with your self evaluation against the Standards. Find out more Five-Minute Film Festival: Twitter in Education I think it's fair to say that Twitter can no longer be dismissed as a trivial passing fad. Though I had dabbled with a personal account, my entire opinion changed when I started my @VideoAmy account and dove in to the conversations educators were engaged in. While some people certainly do tweet about what they're having for breakfast, teachers, administrators, and educational organizations use Twitter in a whole different way -- making smart use of those 140 characters to share resources, wisdom, and inspiration. With the wealth of information out there, you have to cut through the noise a little to figure out how it will work best for you. PLN-building? Classroom discussions?
What is #gtcsPL? | Teaching Scotland You may have noticed that we have been using a Twitter hashtag you may not have come across before. The #gtcsPL hashtag has kind of popped up with little explanation of what it's actually for and since it's being used on multiple days you may have gathered that it's not associated with an event. The hashtag is is to promote professional learning and the different ways in which we increase our professional skills and knowledge. In return we'll also be using the hashtag to promote examples of professional learning to you, both from us and our followers. We'll also be hosting a live discussion through #gtcsPL on Twitter with our Education Advisor for Research and Professional Learning, Dr Zoè Robertson @drzoegtcs. In the mean time, look out for tweets with the #gtcsPL hashtag and please join in with the discussion online. Find out more about Professional Standards at: www.gtcs.org.uk/standards Exclusive October 2013 If you like this, you might also like...
6 Tips on How to Use Twitter's New Vine Video App for Marketing Twitter is underwhelming at 140 characters. Any sane person would say “What do you do with that?” Why limit yourself to so few words when there is a dictionary and an encyclopedia available and limitless communication at your disposal. Its brevity is both an enigma and its charm. Keeping it simple is not without success precedent. One of the most successful children’s books of all time was written with only 50 words. Simple is good. The history of short and simple Just over twenty years ago on December 3, 1992 the message “Merry Christmas” was sent by software engineer Neil Papworth to the Vodafone director Richard Jarvis. That was the world’s first text message. Who would think that 20 years later that: 6 billion messages would be sent every day in the USA2.2 trillion texts would be sent every year in the USA8.6 trillion SMS messages would be created every year around the planetText messaging would be a $150 billion a year industry It is the messaging of choice for most teenagers. Why bother?