Over the past few months I’ve become more and more convinced by the power of Twitter as a tool for my own professional development.
Twitter is a rather abstract concept to get your head round. Concieved as a way of social networking (think facebook status updates) it has taken on a whole new identity when pit into the hands of education professionals. I and others in my PLN (personal learning network) use it to post ideas about classroom practice, share useful websites, point followers to useful blogposts and perhaps most importantly ask each other questions.
In all honesty it has been one of the most useful and Inspiring things that I have ever done professionally. I see its strengths as follows:
- Brevity, there’s not much chance for waffle in 140 characters!
- Engaging with other educators globally.
- Non-judgemental discussion and opinion.
- Ideas, ideas, ideas!
If you are thinking of getting into Twitter, and I would recomend that you do, then the key is to follow people who have similar interests to you professionally. Linger around ‘listening’ to conversations, check out recent ‘tweets’ and use Twitter tools to see who’s following who to build up your PLN.
Most importantly engage and share tour ideas / views!
If you want to see what it’s all about follow me: @mrkp
Get involved in the conversation.
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July 7th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Recently taken up the role of ICT Coordinator, out of interest do you use Twitter in ’school time’ and so bypassing SWGfL blocking of it?
August 20th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Sorry about leaving the reply so long! I don’t use twitter with my class at present. However many people do. I think it all depends how confident you are in your network. I have experimented with using edmodo which is basically twitter for eduaction. The two people to ask about this for more information are @tombarrett and @tomsale. They can give you some better advice.