What is this Twitter Thing?

With the Twitterverse chirping about the big change from 140 characters to 280, I thought this might be a good time to review what "this Twitter thing" is and why it can be so powerful in schools and education.

What is Twitter and how can it help me? 

Twit

Lurking 

I spend a lot of time on Twitter, simply scrolling through tweets to see what catches my eye.  But in order to do that, you need to figure out who and what to follow.  Luckily there are tons of ways to discover accounts.  Take a look at these blog posts:

• 50 of the Best Education Accounts to Follow 
• 15 Top Educators to Follow on Twitter in 2017
• Top 10 Twitter Accounts to follow for Education Technology 

These should give you an idea of Twitter power users; soon you'll notice who they follow, which will help you to grow your "personal learning network". 

In addition to following individual accounts it is very useful to follow hashtags.  Hashtags are basically category groups of tweets, so by following them, you will naturally find accounts and users to that would be of interest to you. Some of the hashtags that I think are the most useful for us as middle school teachers are: 

• #21learns -  This is the hashtag that most teachers in our district use when posting.  It gives you an idea of what is going on in the district.
• #artsed
• #mathed
• #socialstudies
• #scienceed
• #middleschool
• #wuos  (Writing Units of Study)
• #connectedmath (The CMP Hashtag)

Each of those hashtags help us to create connections with other educators and educational resources across the Twitterverse.  And, if you're looking for even more educational hashtags to follow, you can check out this Complete Guide to Education Hashtags on Twitter

Connecting 

The next step after lurking, bringing it up a notch, is connecting.  There are lots of different ways to connect, both for your own professional learning and to bring in resources for your students. 

Twitter Chats-  

Many of the same groups that were listed above as a hashtag, also run Twitter chats at certain times.  These chats are real-time conversations in which educators with common interests discuss topics or ideas that are pertinent to their classroom.  Some of the most active Twitter chat hashtags are:  

• #edchat- Tuesdays from 12:00-1:00 and 7:00-8:00 EST
• #engchat- Monday from 7:00-8:00 EST
• #sschat - Mondays at 6:00 EST
• #msmathchat- Monday 9:00 EST
• #mathchat- Thursday 8:00 EST, 8:30 PM EST on Mondays-
• #mschat- Thursdays 8:00 EST
• #pbischat- Tuesday 9:00 EST

And that's just some of the chats that you can find online, if you want to dig even deeper you can follow this up to date list of education chats. and this video gives you some tips for chatting in these groups.  An additional benefit of these chats is that even if you miss them during their "live" time, you can follow the discussion later by just searching for the hashtag. 

Connect Students with the Real World

In addition to using Twitter to enhance your own personal learning network, you can also use it to allow the students to learn from real experts by tagging the accounts of experts or companies, or posting students' work and sharing it with someone who might be interested. For example, if a student is writing about the time they met a favorite athlete, you could tag that athlete with the hope that he or she might respond. Or, if you are learning about the constitution, you can have the students come up with questions for your local member of congress and tweet him or her with the hope of getting a response. 

Sharing 

Finally, Twitter can be used for sharing.  Both you and your students can share expertise.  When students create projects or blog posts, Twitter can be a tool used so that a real audience can see it.  My favorite hashtag for getting a real audience is #comments4kids.  This is a hashtag that was set up so to it wold be easy to find posts looking for an audience.  

We are all experts in something.  As you are teaching each day, consider sharing what you are doing.  Take pictures, share screenshots, upload videos, and be proud of what you are doing each day.  Try to use a hashtag that will help find you an audience, (for example #21learns if you are in District 21).  Twitter is an excellent way to "show and tell" what you are doing each day so others can learn from you too!