Guide to Using Twitter in Your Teaching Practice : KQED Education | KQED Public Media for Northern CA Are you interested in using Twitter or other social media as a teaching tool? Our culture has transformed significantly where online distribution of ideas has become commonplace. Our students’ needs have shifted and they require digital citizenship skills. We’ve seen all sorts of creative use cases, but here are the most common forms: Teachers and students use Twitter for communication and conversation so they can keep the in-class discussion going after class! Twitter is a great way to add context to content especially when students need to study a topic and find experts in the field and ask them questions on Twitter! Below, you will find some great resources for your school community to help jump into using social media, specifically Twitter, as a learning tool. As you know, being a teacher means you’re uniquely positioned to provide valuable guidance and insight to your students around areas related to online safety and digital citizenship. Back to the top Understanding Twitter
A Refreshingly Simple Guide To Twitter For Teachers Teachers are on Twitter every minute of every day. There are daily hashtag chats where educators from around the globe collaborate, share interesting tidbits, and make lifelong connections never before possible. There are people with tens of thousands of followers who are viewed as thought and opinion leaders. It’s a minute-by-minute pulse of the education world. It’s exhausting. It’s overwhelming. It’s hard to imagine where to start. That’s the idea behind this simple visual guide to Twitter for teachers who are either new to the social network or simply need a refresher about why they got started in the first place. So if you’re scared of getting started with Twitter, this is a great first visual to check out. This image is a little bit dated (uses old icons, etc.) but the usefulness remains. Source: Rossier Online
Teachers – The 10 Stages of Twitter | dedwards.me 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. 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 Reflect that twitter is an incredibly positive place and everyone is full of praise. Stage 10 (the reason for this post) When seeking opinion from a range of people, ask PLN to respond.
How To Manage Your PLN Using Twitter Lists One of the greatest boosts in my teaching career has been the development of my Twitter PLN/ALN ( as per a previous post – mine isn’t just “Personal” it’s an “Active” Learning Network ). It has been amazing for me to see who I have followed, what their interests are, and more importantly who their contacts have led me to. But even judicious building of an ALN/PLN can lead to a large, and unwieldy stream of tweets. Especially as many of those I find key to my learning often participate in their own chats. The List So – my key to maintaining my control of my learning network is the list . If the Twitter stream is the filing cabinet of my PLN then the List is the “label” on the drawer (the person I follow is the “file”). Instead of viewing my Twitter stream as a ‘whole’ – which can be overwhelming – I tend to use the lists for the ‘hit’ that I feel that I need. Building Your Lists In an ideal world you would have created your lists categories before building your network.
The Teacher's Guide To Twitter Twitter has proven itself to be an indispensable tool for educators around the globe. Whatever skill level you may be, Twitter is downright fun and worth your time. So here’s a useful guide that we curated from Edudemic’s archives in an effort to put something together that was a bit easier to read than random blog posts. We hope you enjoy and will be regularly adding to this guide so feel free to leave your ideas down in the comments or by, what else, tweeting us @edudemic anytime! Our Biggest Twitter Tips For Teachers For many teachers making a foray into the edtech world, Twitter is an excellent tool for consuming and learning. Many are also harnessing Twitter as a part of their PLN (personal learning network) to connect, share, and network. Check out our biggest Twitter tips for teachers below! Create, Don’t Just Consume The best way to get the most out of Twitter is to use it. Connect and Network Share Your Resources Keep At It Guide To Education-Oriented Twitter Hashtags Search Rule #1
How To Create A Twitter List - A Step By Step Guide! By now, you already know that Twitter is a great tool for teachers . Not only can you use it in your classroom to keep your students and their parents informed of what’s going on, you can also use it in class for projects and homework, and you can use it for your own professional development and PLN . Recently, we heard from a teacher who uses Twitter Lists to help manage her PLN and keep her sane when she’s trying to find the resources she needs. Twitter lists are a great way to maximize what you can get out of the tool, and an easy way to help you categorize and ‘file’ the people/things/information you’re after! The author of that article offered some great advice on curating the Twitter lists, but several of you have asked how to make a Twitter list more generally, so we figured there are probably lots of people out there who have never made a Twitter list and would like to know how. Step 1: Step 2: Click on ‘Create List’. Step 3: Give your list a name and a description. Step 4: Step 5:
The Complete Guide To Twitter Hashtags For Education What is a hashtag? A word or phrase preceded by a “#.” Twitter can be a busy place with lots of tweets–and thus lots of “noise.” A #hashtag is a way to aggregate tweets that are appended with a hashtag. Picture it like a magnet that attracts all messages categorized by that topical word or phrase. See also 50 Of The Best Education Accounts On Twitter Anyone. What else do I need to know? Don’t hashtag spam–if your tweet doesn’t add to that hashtag’s topic, discussion, or user base, don’t add the hashtag.Use more than one hashtag if it applies to more than one topic, but choose wisely. Meeting Times Many of the hashtags have “meeting times” where educators agree to “meet and tweet”–that is, send out messages on a topic at a certain time on a certain day. If you do participate at the agreed upon time, you’ll see the tweets stream in live and participate in said conversation (via twitter) in what is nearly real-time. Updated: Added #edcamp, #ukedchat, #whatisschool Trends General Content Areas iPad
Twitter for Professional Development: Ultra Beginner Edition, Part 2 Written by Mark Brumley Beyond the Basics In the post Twitter for Professional Development: Ultra Beginner Edition, I offered a simple way to demonstrate the power of Twitter to teachers. Sharing The next step is for teachers to share what they learn. A zillion possibilities exist to share content including a shared Google doc, Evernote notebook and, of course, the faculty room bulletin board. With newbies, I suggest using Diigo. Login to Diigo and create a new group. Social Bookmarking Now the most difficult part by far; explain social bookmarking to your teachers and have them create Diigo accounts. Okay, that’s the hard part…now for the fun. I’m not going to lie; this is an exhausting professional development session.