Five Tips to Making Twitter Your New Professional Development Source

Believe it or not, each evening, I glean valuable professional development tips from educational leaders, innovative teachers, and educational technology gurus worldwide.  Did I mention that I don't even leave my home?  BT (Before Twitter), I would spend hours perusing the web in search of professional development that met my immediate needs.  The problem . . . I spent more time searching than actually learning about the professional development topic.

And then . . . last summer my professional development searchflow changed . . . with Twitter.  My professional development access AT (After Twitter) allows me to practice what I preach as an Instructional Technology Facilitator by using 21st century skills such as communication and collaboration in a 2.0 environment; this virtual PD has no walls, no boundaries, and provides immediate and relevant access to the best tips, ideas, strategies, and resources that align . . . wait for it . . . to my individual needs!

Regardless of your current Twitter status, BT or AT, I have outlined five tips to assist you in making Twitter your new professional development source.

Tip 1:  Create a Twitter account dedicated solely (or mostly) to your professional development needs.

While many teachers have Twitter accounts for their classrooms and personal Twitter accounts, I recommend that you create one account specifically for your professional needs.  This provides you with a focused venue and will entice more educationally focused users to follow you.  As a result, you will widen your professional repertoire.  Even though I follow a few personal interests on my Twitter account, I rarely RT (retweet) or communicate through this account on a personal level . . . other than a few RTed running quotes.

Feel free to checkout my Twitter account @jillwatkins1010 and the ITF Twitter account @parkhillitf. We would love to have you all as followers so that we can share the great resources we find and expand our collaboration outside of the school day.

Tip 2:  Follow educational gurus who share your vision and pedagogy.

One question that I hear from teachers regarding Twitter is "I don't know who to follow."  This can be the hardest part about getting started with Twitter, but once you find educational experts who can provide you with tips, ideas, links, blogs, other websites, videos, and research, you will be hooked!  However, BEWARE:  Twitter is an addiction! You can find Twitter users to address all of your educational needs and interests.  From curriculum topics like Common Core State Standards to Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and educational technology from Google Apps to lesson plan ideas and templates, Twitter is a hub for educational resources.

Consider following some of these educational professionals to get you started!

@ijukes Ian Jukes is a speaker, co-author of 14 books, consultant, self-claimed educational evangelist, and co-developer of the 21st Century Fluency Project.  Jukes tweets about 21st century learning and teaching through transforming direct instruction, tools for teaching, and using technology to offer real-world experiences.

@tncollins97 Nate Collins is an Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction in Virginia, USA.  He is a collaborative and reflective leader who tweets about tools and strategies for fostering 21st century learning and includes a lot of Google Doc tricks and tips.

@RigorRelevance The International Center for Leadership in Education tweets tools that align to higher-order thinking and real-world application as outlined in Daggett's Rigor and Relevance Quadrants.

@kylepace Pace is an Instructional Technology Specialist, Google Certified Teacher, the 2013 Ed Week Leader to Learn From, ASCD emerging leader, and educational presenter from Kansas City, USA.  Pace is active in #edchat, #edcamp, and #moedchat.  He focuses on developing the web 2.0 classroom and effective tools for curriculum integration.

@TDOttawa Tom D'Amico is a Twitter guru with over 4,000 followers who focuses on learning and teaching in the 21st century with a focus n EDtech, web 2.0, innovation, technology and creativity.  He is a superintendent in Ottawa, Ontario.

@classroom20 Classroom 2.0 is a network that provides resources for a student-centered classroom and global classroom, including videos, templates, tool tips, etc.

@isteconnects ISTE tweets are from @HeidiEllis and @BritniHartford as they provide tips to advance learning and teaching in regard to Common Core, flipped learning, and blended learning.  They also offer webinars and whitepapers.

Tip 3:  Use hashtags to search for information related to a topic and to tag your tweets.

#Hashtags are useful ways to search for tweets and to tag your own tweets.  The Park Hill Instructional Technology Facilitators will be using #phitf.  If you tweet a tool, tip, or resource that would benefit our team, please add our hashtag to your tweets!  Below, I have listed some popular and useful hashtags used by educational professionals.
#edchat
#edtech
#mlearning
#edapps
#edu
#education
#edcamp
#moedchat

Also, Twitter hosts educational chats!  You can follow (or, as I call it, "stalk") or participate in a Twitter chat by a hashtag.  Consider trying one of the many Twitter chats.  Here is a Google Calendar with educational chats for all content areas.

Tip 4:  Add the Twitter app to your iPhone or Android and add TweetDeck to your Chrome homepage.

Oh, I know . . . at this point you think that you would never use Twitter from your phone or need a desktop app for your Twitter timeline, interactions, tweets, or favorites.  But . . . remember, Twitter is addictive!  The Twitter app for the iPhone or Android gives you access to your professional educational Twitter account 24/7--not that you need to follow it 24/7.  The best part about Twitter is that the good tweets resurface because someone, somewhere is retweeting.

TweetDeck is, well, absolutely awesome!  TweetDeck is a free Chrome App that allows you to quickly access your Twitter account and view all activity:  timelines, interactions, mentions, followers, messages, tweets, favorites, and even trends.  My TweetDeck is set so that I can access both my @jillwatkins1010 and @parkhillitf accounts.  This means that I can follow tweets and create tweets from either account from my desktop simply by opening the app.  I've included a screenshot of my TweetDeck below.  In the words of one of my ITF counterparts:  "It's super-cool!"

Tip 5:  Use Twitter as your personal forum to tweet, retweet, collaborate, request feedback, and generate ideas specifically for your classroom. 

Twitter is a one-stop tool to connect you to the educational world.  You can tweet resources you find and retweet great tips and tools from users you are following.  However, the most powerful element of Twitter is the ability to collaborate, request feedback, and generate ideas specifically for your classroom.  For example, through Twitter, I connected with an author and Tweeted a question:  "Would you be willing to Skype with a classroom in my district to discuss your book?"  The Reply:  "Yes!  Let's set it up!"  It really was that easy! Twitter gives teachers the ability to ask questions, gather responses, and use those ideas in the classroom.

For you savvy and experienced Twitter users, these tips might not be enough to extend your current use of this social media turned professional development tool.  But . . . I have a few other Twitter tips and tricks up my sleeve that I will be sharing in future posts!

#tweethappy
@jillwatkins1010