Twitter: A Professional Learning Network

What Is Twitter?

If you have access to internet, television, or even if you don't, chances are you have heard of Twitter. If you haven't heard of Twitter, it is a social media platform which allows people to send and read short 140-character messages called "tweets". With the use of Twitter, people are able to connect, share themselves, and discover what is happening around the world. Twitter is used by all the major media outlets, celebrities, organizations, and even President Barack Obama. What many people do not think about, is how twitter can be used in schools and as a professional learning network (PLN). According to Brianna Crowley, a professional learning network is a "vibrant, ever-changing group of connections to which teachers go to both share and learn. These groups reflect our values, passions, and areas of expertise."

How Can I Use Twitter In A Professional Learning Network?

There are so many different ways to use Twitter as a professional learning network. "To use Twitter in a PLN," William Bauer states, "carefully select people to follow who share information that can inform and enrich your professional life. By using Twitter's "hashtags" (a form of keywords) feature, you can further refine the information you receive by filtering tweets for specific information. Among the various applications of hashtags, people interested in specific topics use them to organize live chats through Twitter." Twitter is an amazing community that teachers can use to share lessons plans, presentations, and documents. Teachers can also use Twitter to find excellent educational blogs, websites, apps, and other media sources. The idea of Twitter as a PLN is something that needs to be more widespread because Twitter is such a useful tool for improving our students' educations.

Twitter in the Classroom

Teachers

How can Twitter be used in the classroom? This author states that there are at least 50 different ways! First, you need to create a Twitter profile that all of your students can follow. Once your students begin to follow you, the possibilities are only as endless. You can get more ideas from your professional learning network on how to use Twitter to interact with your students. One way you can use twitter in the classroom is to assign homework and tweet about upcoming due dates. That way, your students will always have a back up way to figure out their due dates if they lose their copy of the syllabus. Another option is to have your students tweet news articles, or journal articles relevant to something you are discussing in class. The next day in class, you can have a discussion with your students about the different articles. Students can favorite those tweets, so the most popular tweets within the class could be the articles focused on in the discussion. A teacher can also tweet out articles and retweet other accounts' information for their students to look at. For a homework assignment, you can have your students read an article you tweet, and have them reply or write a journal response to that article.

Students

Twitter is a valuable tool for students because of the opportunity to connect with people from around the world. Students can follow news outlets and specific writers. They can also follow business leaders, or accounts related to the career they are interested in pursuing. Students can also use Twitter to communicate with other students around the world, or simply within their class in order to share ideas, get inspired, and continue class discussions after class. By following other educational accounts, students can also find ways to get help with their assignments.

My Experience With Twitter

When I began using Twitter, as Bauer advises, I started following educational Twitter pages such as @edutopia and @khanacademy. These are two pages that I thought would offer me some incredible educational resources. Edutopia "emphasizes core strategies: project-based learning, comprehensive assessment, integrated studies, social and emotional learning, educational leadership and teacher development, and technology integration." By following Edutopia on Twitter, I was exposed to just that. Edutopia tweets out ideas for teacher development and technology integration. I have seen Khan Academy in many commercials over the last few years, so I began to follow them as well. Khan Academy's goal is to provide a free, world-class education available to anyone, anywhere. They have had over 25 million learners that have used their programs to educate themselves. They tweet about lessons on their website. I followed a number of other educational Twitter accounts, but some were less relevant and less useful than others. Some of the better accounts I've followed were @educationweek, @edpioneers, @gatesed, and @TEDTalks. These four companies tweet about the latest in education. By following these companies, my twitter feed was constantly exposed to new information about education and learning from experts in their field. One company that my professional learning network exposed me to was @Brightspace. Brightspace is an integrated learning platform that attempts to give every student a personalized learning experience. I am happy I was exposed to this company because I would not have known about it had I not expanded my PLN. 

Conclusion

By creating and expanding my professional learning network through Twitter, I was exposed to new educational software, learned more about the latest in educational research, and gained a new perspective on using social media in the classroom. Any educator can do all of this and more with Twitter and a professional learning network. It takes your educational knowledge to new heights, and even helps you, the teacher, to continue learning your craft while you also teach your students. The idea of Twitter as a PLN, as well as using in the classroom is something that needs to be more widespread because Twitter is such a useful tool for improving our students' educations. I strongly recommend using Twitter in schools and as a tool to expand your professional learning network.

References

About Us. (n.d.). Retrieved April 29, 2015, from http://www.edutopia.org/about

Bauer, W. (2010). Your Personal Learning Network: Professional Development On Demand. Music Educators Journal, 97(2), 37-42. doi:December 2010.

Crowley, B. (2014, December 31). 3 Steps for Building a Professional Learning Network (Web). Retrieved April 28, 2015, from http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/12/31/3-steps-for-building-a-professional-learning.html

Miller, S. (2005, October 10). 50 Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom. Retrieved April 29, 2015, from http://www.teachhub.com/50-ways-use-twitter-classroom

[Twitter banner]. Retrieved April 29, 2015 from http://www.socialtalent.co/blog/how-to-recruit-on-twitter-part-1

[Twitter banner]. Retrieved April 29, 2015 from http://twitter.com

[Untitled professional learning network image]. Retrieved April 29, 2015 from http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/11/teacher-tutorial-on-creating-personal.html

[Untitled collection of twitter images]. Retrieved April, 2015 from https://twitter.com