Part 2: What the @#@#@#???!!!
- - Angela
- Jul 9, 2019
- 2 min read
So, there's this thing out there called Twitter. And many people think of Twitter as a social networking site, but for teachers like me and you, it's become an, "Oh my gosh! I just had the best idea!" site, a "What do you do in this kind of situation?" site, a "What good ideas are out there?" site, and so much more.
I remember when I was in your shoes. I heard a few teacher talking about Twitter, but I didn't have time to add one more thing onto my already full workload. Does that sound familiar? If so, you've come to the right place.
The Two Things You Must Know:
1) the @: the @ symbol is each person's username for Twitter. It's how you can find people, how you'll tag them, and how you can have online conversations with people.
2) the #: the # symbol is how you tag an idea, any idea. You'll learn common phrases that you'll use all the time. (I often talk about PLNs, Ed Tech, and growth mindset, so you'll see a lot of my tweets have #pln, #edtech, and #growthmindset.) People can also make up their own hashtags that express an idea or emotion (like last week, I used #bestnewsallday to try let everyone know that something exciting had happened to me).
Now that you know the two basics of Twitter, you're ready to try, right? (Yep, I'm totally being sarcastic. I don't think my own explanation would have convinced me to try it. So, let's try a different approach.)
Not quite ready to try Twitter?
Let me give you some advice that a friend gave me. You don't need to dive in. You can literally just stick one toe in the water. Let's try looking on Twitter together. Let's look for ideas by searching with a #.
Let's pretend you teach first grade. Let's look for what other teachers are saying at the moment. Watch this one minute "quick tip."
Now let's say you teach high school math. Let's see what that search would look like.
What if you're on your phone? Is there anything different? Go ahead! Try it! You'll like it!
What do you think? Pretty cool way to connect with other teachers, right? You'll be a Twitter addict in no time!
P.S Now that you're off and finding great ideas, you'll notice that a lot of people have great ideas! Want to find their ideas faster??? Come on back for my next blog post and I'll help you out!
P.P.S. FYI: It took me about a year of just reading ideas on Twitter before I actually had the opportunity to experience the power of the PLNs that exist in the Twitterverse. Now I can't imagine being an educator without Twitter PLNs in my corner. (Coming soon, an addition to my blog site called Best of my #PLN.)
Comments