Teachers: Do You Tweet? (You Should)

“You don't know what you don’t know.”

There are two ways to grapple with the truth of the above quote

  1. Embrace this fact. And: Get curious about what it is you don’t know (that could potentially and immeasurably improve your knowledge base, skills, instruction).
  2. Be an Ostrich: Stick you head in the sand and pretend that there’s nothing more to learn.

Twitter, for many teachers, represents a vast landscape of knowledge that they have yet to tap into. On a certain level, that makes sense. Twitter seems, on the surface, to be a shallow stream of self-centered ‘reports’ about what’s going in in one’s life. And, yeah, it could be this. But, for the majority of teachers who have twitter accounts and use it daily, it is far from this.

Twitter for teachers who have gotten curious is now (as some have called it) a ‘professional development superhighway’. And it is. The learning potential is literally endless. The collective knowledge represented there is awesome in scope. The isolation so often cited as a problem in Education vanishes when there is sudden and immediate access to other teachers grappling with the same problems and questions you are.

Stop worrying how to use Twitter and other “Tech tools”. Just make an account and Get Curious.

Check out Twitter4Teachers and Tweepml to find teachers to follow. Lurk for awhile and see how these teachers use Twitter. Click out to their blogs. Subscribe to their blog feeds. Eventually, join in on some #edchats.

Get to know what you don't know. Get curious and don't turn back. Create a Twitter account today.

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3 comments :

Patti Grayson said...

Yes, yes, and YES!!! Twitter is the most amazing source of professional development. I wrote about it here: http://plpnetwork.com/2011/07/29/twitter-for-teachers-discover-hashtag-pd/.

Twitter is also a great way to help get student comments on blogs using #comments4kids or to follow conferences, etc. Thanks for a great post!

Anonymous said...

Great post! Taking the initiative to create an account and peruse the ed chats is one way to start. I wrote a blog post about twitter chats and personalized professional development.

http://wp.me/p1FHhA-2j

Anonymous said...

Couldn't agree more. Twitter also works in the classroom. Here's how I use it http://levdavidovic.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/42/