Twitter for Pofessional Growth: Part 1 - Getting Started

Twitter: Twitter For Professional Development (Part 1)

Twitter can be an amazing resource when thought of as a Personal Learning Network (PLN). Teachers can use twitter to develop their own personalized “network” of fellow educators and resources designed to make them a better teacher. If you are not on Twitter yet ... get there. There are far too many great discussions happening for you to keep missing out. 

How To Sign Up For Twitter

Start Building Your PLN With ISD 624 Employees

To encourage teachers to build their PLN, promote collaboration across our district, and to expand the digital reach of our educators globally, we are creating a resource of twitter handles from ISD624 teachers to share across our district. This is an optional activity, but connecting with other great educators on twitter could be transformational to your teaching practices. Twitter handles collected from this form will be available to ISD624 employees via this blog and emails from your Digital Learning Specialist. Fill out this form if you are interested in sharing your twitter handle for other ISD 624 teachers to follow:

Click Here To Join Fill Out The ISD 624 PLN Twitter Handle Collection Form

Twitter Best Practices 

• The purpose of this twitter account you will create is for professional purposes - to make you a better educator.
• Do not use Twitter like facebook - No pictures of food, posts about your family, or political rants.
• No profile eggs.  Make sure you upload a picture of yourself for your twitter profile. It brings legitimacy to your profile. 
• Unless you’re at an education event, do not say where you are at.
• Do not be afraid to UNFOLLOW people.  If they are not making you a better educator, unfollow them. 
• Your description is important, make sure you describe yourself as a teacher and other characteristics to get people who you want to be part of your PLN will want to follow you.

Identify Your #Hashtags 

Hashtags are a tool to make words searchable. Hashtags allow Twitter users to tap into a twitter-wide conversation. Discover the trending conversations, and decide which ones you want to be included in by clicking on a hashtag. This will help you connect with users who have similar interests. To create a hashtag, place # before a word or a combination of words without spaces. One very popular education hashtag is #edchat and our district technology hashtag is #isd624tech.

Find Some Educators To Follow