A Little Birdie Told me...

I am rarely an early adopter. Twitter was created just over five years ago, and references to it are about as common as the call sign on many radio stations, but until six months ago I was not counted among its 200 million users. My impression was that Twitter was a collection of trivial comments on what people had for breakfast and other things that truly do not interest me. Last year my feelings about Twitter began to change, and over the past six months Twitter has become invaluable for me as a teacher.

At the Ontario Association of Physics Teachers conference this year I met teachers who were trying interesting ideas in their classes, and I wanted to keep track of them and hear about their teaching. Many of these teachers were active on Twitter, so on May 13 I signed up for an account and began to read some their comments on teaching. Since then the list of those I “follow” on Twitter has slowly grown, and a number of times I have directly used their recommended resources, websites, and teaching strategies in my classes.

TWITTER 101

Twitter is an online service which allows people to write short text messages of 140 characters or less (called tweets) and make them available to anyone in the world. Because of the short message length and because twitter creates a listing of these messages, Twitter is often called a “micro blogging service.” By “following” other Twitter users, people can collect all of those users’ tweets in a single place to be able to read them more easily.

Here are a few key features that affect how Twitter is used:

• Twitter is very public. Generally speaking, all tweets, and lists of who users are “following” are available to anyone in the world. Because of this, if you post tweets you should consider using a twitter account exclusively for your professional use that reflects the way you would like to be known as an educator. There are some methods to keep some information more private in Twitter, but these are limited.
  
• Twitter users can easily “retweet” messages they read which displays that message available to their followers.
  
• Users can “mention” another twitter user in their tweet by prefixing their name with the @ symbol. These tweets are then highlighted to that user like an email in addition to being posted publicly. (ie: @lauren_matheson)
  
• Tweets are collected into groups when users include a “hash tag” in their tweet, the # symbol followed by the name of the group. This can allow for topical discussions. (ie: #cdned or #edchat )
  
• Tweets can be marked as “favourites” to return to later. Favourites lists are also public.
  
• If you follow many other users your twitter screen may have many many tweets. Be somewhat selective in who you follow, or don’t try to keep up with everything that is written. It is ok to only check periodically when you have the time.
  

TWITTER PLN’S AND ALP’S

Twitter can be a great platform to build a Professional Learning Network (PLN) to keep in touch with and learn from other educators near or far. That is what I have most appreciated about Twitter. You might also consider including investigating a Twitter PLN as a part of your next Annual Learning Plan (ALP). To begin your PLN, start by asking others in your department if they use Twitter and have anyone that they would recommend that you follow. Conferences like the upcoming November PD day can also be a great way to begin connections. Next, look at who people you respect are following and consider following them too.

CURIOUS?

Here are three ways to get started:

• Don’t even sign up for Twitter, just bookmark several people’s profile pages of and read them periodically. For instance, you can read tweets from @ABELearn by visiting http://twitter.com/#!/ABELearn
  
• Sign up for twitter (http://twitter.com/), but only follow a few people and never tweet yourself this is probably a good way to start. Once you sign up you can use the search box at the top to find a user (like “ABELearn”). Click on the user in the “people results” at the right, then click the “Follow+” button.
  
• Jump right in. Sign up for twitter, follow a few people, and then share your teaching insights by typing in the “What’s Happening?” box at the top of the page after you sign in. Remember that what you write is public.