Personalized PD: Twitter

Often as educators, we are called to a staff development and hear about the newest trend, data that pertains to a small group of people and very irrelevant to others.  Yes, learning about math data is important to the staff as a whole, but, if there was a way as a teacher we could grow personally and develop our own PD, I think we as a whole can become better educators.

There are many ways, as educators, we can personalize our staff development and these are the ways you can do it:

Twitter:
If you are not on twitter, you should be.  Twitter is by far one of the most powerful ways to learn and grow as a professional.  If you spend 10 minutes from time to time glancing and reading what people post, you will learn something new.  I had a teacher ask me for some insight to a topic.  I went to my twitter, posted a quick question and in a matter of five minutes, I had close to 10 responses with suggestions.   WOW!  Who would have thought five years ago that something that powerful would be available at our fingertips.  (For more information about personalizing PD with twitter, please check this link and read this material.)  Select a few hashtags (#) and watch them from time to time.  There are a lot of programs that allow you to follow the chat, some even allow for an archive so you can go back and see it later.

Here are some fantastic education chats and links to places you should visit to learn more about twitter for education:
The Cybraryman:   This site is a plethora of information for everyone in education.  The link here is for Twitter and it includes a lot of informational pieces for you.  He has established a schedule of all of the education chats out there and the times. (PLEASE DON'T BE OVERWHELMED) There are many of them, but only a few may pertain to your needs.

Here are the ones I personally attend from time to time:
#edchat  (Tuesdays at 7pm)  Lots of fantastic ed topics.
#INeLearn (Thursdays at 8pm)  Directed by IN-DOE department of eLearning.  Excellent source of information.  Topics vary weekly. (Every state has their own, I follow Indiana's since I live in the Hoosier state.)
#edtechchat (Mondays at 8pm) Focus on educational technology.

Are you looking for some people to follow?  Everyone listed here are a good start of who should  be followed on Twitter.  As you follow these folks' posts, you will see more people to follow.  If you are looking for content specific people, ask it on Twitter, someone will help you.:
Jerry Blumengarten                                             edweb.net
ISTE                                                                 Kimberly Munoz
Edtechtalk                                                         Sara Hunter
Angela Maiers                                                   Larry Ferlazzo
Matt Miller                                                     
Michelle Green
George Couros
INeLearning
Chris Casal
Connected Educators Project
Shelly Terrell
Edudemic
Will Richardson
Kathy Schrock
Adam Bellow
Pam Moran
Richard Byrne
Erin Klein
SimpleK12
Vicki Davis

Managing multiple social media feeds at once

I must admit, I am a social media junkie.  I love Twitter and Facebook.  I participate in many chats each week, sometimes multiples at once.  I am an all over the place social media freak.  Sometimes, especially when I am involved in multiple conversations,  I use different apps to help me.   Tweetdeck is my favorite.

Tweetdeck has several means to present your information.  You can download an app to your device (Computer, iPad, Android, etc) or you can work off of the internet browser directly.   The program lets you organize columns of information to follow.   For example, I have all of my interactions, #edchat, #tlchat #pblchat etc. set up to filter into tweetdeck. I can multitask, which in my line of work is key.  

If you are a google chrome user,tweetdec k is an actual app built into the browser.   I use it regularly to keep track of things I am working on.  It also lets you keep track of lists, favorites and messages.  You can also monitor your Facebook page as well.  I love the ease of use.

I have tried other programs to monitor and track social media, but I have foundtweetdec k is the easiest for my needs.   

A few words of caution:  If you have the actual app installed on your computer, beware, if you don't set it up right, you have a constantpin g as tweets come in. It gets to be a little of an annoying sound.  The alert isnice bu t if you are trying to do something, it gets distracting. 

Look it over if you are interested in organizing your social media into one place.

*Note: Thetweetdec k version you are seeing here is the versionfro m google chrome. 

How I use twitter in my classroom

http://chris-wallace.com/2009/01/02/tweeties-a-free-twitter-icon-set/

I have read a lot of posts by different educators about Twitter in the classroom.  I decided I would share some of the ways I use twitter or how I anticipate using it this year.

First of all, my school district has been very open minded about attempting to use social media in school.  If it is monitored by the teachers and used for a learning process, the administration has been all for it.  I am grateful for this.  I think allowing social media is a great tool and it's something different that kids will use.  I also think opening it up to them teaches them more social responsibility and more about digital citizenship.  If they see how it is being used in the real world, they are going to learn more about it and do it right.

I start off the school year having all of my students create a twitter account. We have set hashtags for each class.  Since I teach French, I use #hhsfrench1, #hhsfrench2, etc.  I have not seen those tags used any other time, so I am pretty fortunate to use them.  Since the group tweet program is running now, I will look into using that as well.  It can keep the kids tweets private and only I can see what they say.  I have a twitter account set up for my personal use as well as one for school.  My students are all instructed to follow my school account.  I follow them back.  I don't use my school account often.  I usually just access it when we are doing tasks on twitter. Some of my students also follow my personal account, but I think once they see how many things I tweet about education, they lose interest and unfollow me.

When it comes time to do things, I use twitter in a few different ways.  I have the kids tweet sentences to me about things we did in class.  I use it as an exit slip.  I have a few kids who prefer to submit their assignments via twitter and not on paper.  Works for me.  I set up my google reader account to follow that hashtag and I can refer to it later.

I have used twitter to have the kids connect with people from other countries. They ask questions of them or merely read their posts and summarize for me.  I give them names of famous people in Francophone places and a few newspapers and have them follow those.  They summarize what they read to me.

This year, we are making a few connections with other schools so they will hopefully have the opportunity to tweet with their new colleagues abroad.

On an additional note, I also have a twitter account set up for the school library and the yearbook.  When I need images, I tweet and kids send them to me.  I use the library account to announce new books we have added, contests we are doing and special events.  I have a good number of students who follow the library on twitter and use it to find out a lot of information.

I am a twitter freak.  My husband makes fun of me because of how many things I post on twitter.  He calls me a twitterer.  Oh well, I am proud to be a twitterer and excited to share it with my studens.