Twitter for Professional Development

Social media can be a great way not only for personal use, but for developing a professional learning network (PLN) for educators. While it is always best to do what is right for yourself, we could always use help or suggestions to make social media more effective for educational purposes. Two articles I read about using Twitter for professional development (The Teacher's Guide to Twitter and 10 Twitter Mistakes You Should Avoid) have really good insight on how to make Twitter right for you.




The Teacher's Guide to Twitter

This article is very concise and has many suggestions to use Twitter effectively for education. One of the issues that is brought up is how to weed through microbloggers to find the ones right for you. Hashtags are very important. One suggestion given is to find educational hashtags and keywords relating to your topic to develop a PLN. The article also advises to create and share your own resources, not just consume others. As for following others, make sure you find experts on your topic to follow. There is also a lengthy list of 100 ways to use Twitter for more effective usage: Talk to people about their interests, use hashtags, don't try to read everything, share your information and credentials, as well as many others.




10 Twitter Mistakes You Should Avoid

This is a very short article giving anyone advice on what not to do:

• Don't over-tweet
• Don't re-tweet compliments
• Don't tweet about food

The list goes on. I think it's good advice to have a better following. I think about it this way: I don't want to see certain things people tweet about (food, specifically) so I wouldn't tweet about those things either.




Overall I think Twitter is a very good way for developing a Professional Learning Network to help find resources, share information, and ultimately connect with other like-minded individuals to help teachers be more effective in the classroom.