Well, it is any question still a lot of teachers and education personnel are asking themselves that very question. In one fashion or another I mean it did help in getting rid of a dictator in Egypt, but what purpose can Twitter or micro blogging can possibly serve in education? You might ask yourself how something written in 140 characters or less can be interesting and relevant to education or your pedagogical practice.
Surprisingly, it is often enough to get us interested in reading more by following a link to start a conversation or to get us thinking about something new and that’s just by following a few people who tweet you don’t have to tweet a peep. Just as you don’t have to read all the blogs on TV, you pick and choose whose tweets you want to read. If someone’s overwhelming you with pointless tweets, you can choose not to follow that person anymore.
I think you’re better off following a few interesting people on Twitter who tweet mainly about one subject in our case education, you can also search the whole Twitter sphere for subjects you find more relevant. For example, the edchat hashtag is used for discussions on education. I for one and the professional Twitter user, not that I get paid to create in red ibly. What I mean is that the only things I do tweet have to do with education discussion that happens to be my job.
I use Twitter to link to some interesting articles, articles presentations and every once in a while. I tweet pedagogically focused epiphanies or questions to spark a discussion. I tweet parsimoniously a few times a week. Perhaps so. People who follow me are never swamped by what I think is tweeted. I keep things tidy by using Facebook for my personal stuff and Twitter for professional matters, and since I follow some very interesting tweeter Oddie’s, I also retweet some of what they have to say.
This is, of course, an amazing strength of micro blogging. Not only does your network of interesting people feed you with good ideas, epiphanies questions, discussions and references, but these tweets can also be shared from one network to another and another and another feel like sharing something but worried that the 140 character limit will cramp your literary Style, yes, it might seem like a big constraint, but it certainly is way easier than Shakespearean.
Iambic pentameter and nobody said you couldn’t tweet a few times in a row if need be, try it after a while you’ll, probably discover that we also need fewer than a hundred and forty characters to convey something of value to other people. And what about your learning? Should they tweet as well? Well, if access to technology was as ubiquitous in schools as it is in real life, I’d say they could pretty much use Twitter.
The same way I’ve just described for teachers, then again, I’m not convinced that it’s really easy to find Twitter users who tweet about math or language or other school related topics for learners. It could eventually happen mind you, one very different way Twitter can be used is for back-blog activities. This is when you let people share their thoughts as you are presenting something, and on top of that, there are some learning activities that make interesting use of Twitter Tim Burton’s, Kodama X key is an excellent example of that, so to tweet or not to tweet.
Is that still a question? Well, I hope your answer is to tweet sent this tool will allow you to easily network with interesting people, and if you asked me who to follow on Twitter as a starting professional development lined up, these would be my top 5 picks Tom Whitby tom is a Wonderful micro and full fledged blogger, above and beyond his relevant tweets on education and one-liner questions. You can also read his thoughts more detail on his blog, my island view.
Lisa nielsen lisa tweets a lot and I love the way, she’s not afraid to battle the cages with strong statements outside the box thinking. She also engages other Twitter users and relevant conversations, Sir Ken Robinson, one of the paramount thinkers of our time in regards to education, creativity and innovation. Nuff said Edutopia following Edutopia on twitter is a great way to keep abreast of their blog and article postings.
This is the George Lucas, educational foundations, way of helping to document and publish what works in education and yours truly. This guy well he’s an OK chap every once in a while he’ll throw some thought-provoking article presentation about what he thinks we can all do to change. Education for the better. I hope this will inspire you to try Twitter for professional reasons. Try it for 30 days, and let me know about your experience.
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