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In late July I decided to join Twitter. To be perfectly honest with you I had no idea what I was supposed to do when I got on there but I heard so much about it I thought it would be a worthwhile experience. The only concern was that we have so many distractions already in life that I wasn't sure that I needed to add one more the list.

I consider myself fairly technological, and given the amount of time I spend checking e-mail I know that I am "connected." I have a "Smart" phone, IPod, IPad, laptop and I created my own website. For a long time I thought Twitter was a venue for celebrities to Tweet their every move, so it wasn't anything that interested me but I figured I would give it a try.

Lynn, the Director of Technology in the school district where I am a principal, kept telling me that Twitter is great because it streamlines the information you receive. She is a "techie" and knows about all of the latest 21st century tools and I trust her judgment. I did however, like the idea that Twitter offered "one stop shopping" for all of my educational needs.

Too many times in the 24/7 media we are hit with images we would rather not have to see. As I get older I have less of a need to hear most of the news that come on the television. She assured me that with Twitter, you choose to follow people that have your common interests and when they Tweet information, you will be exposed to articles, blogs, videos, quotations and information that you find valuable. She certainly made it sound interesting.

Every month I made new connections but wasn't really into the whole experience. Then, in early November something amazing happened. I actually understood what Twitter was all about. All of Lynn's advice came rushing at me when I found an elementary education chat session happening on a Saturday evening. I have to admit that I wasn't sure what #elemchat meant but I saw a few of the people I was following add that phrase to what they were posting. I decided to click on #elemchat and I found educators from all over the world posting advice and resources for elementary education.

That was the moment I became hooked on Twitter. Connecting with people from around the world who have similar interests and understand your passion for education can be inspiring. Although educators get accused of accepting the status quo and not wanting to move forward, Twitter is a place where that accusation is proven wrong. Educators, who do not know each other and have never met, and may never meet, share their best practices, wisdom or advice.

Why Educators Should Join Twitter
We live in the 21st century where our students don't just "do" social networking; it is a part of who they are as digital citizens. To us, it's a big deal to get on Facebook or Twitter, and to our students it is something they cannot fathom living without. Understanding their connection with those sites will increase an educator's connection with their students. Being able to talk their language may even provide an opportunity to breakthrough to a hard to reach student.

Many educators have students that they cannot seem to reach. Sometimes those educators do not feel comfortable reaching out to their immediate colleagues, so they reach out to people they follow or to the people who follow them on Twitter. Many times those colleagues on Twitter can provide really valuable resources that can help educators meet the needs of their hardest to reach students.

In addition, there are millions of people on Twitter, including organizations that have great resources around such issues as homelessness, bullying, special education and gifted education. Socially and emotionally many of our students are dealing with issues that many educators never had to deal with, and a social network like Twitter, and the organizations that are on there, can help educators help their students and parents by connecting them with many valuable resources.

Professional Development
Many educators are intrinsically motivated to find their own professional development. They read websites and blogs and are members of organizations that send them journals. They read more educational material than they read books for fun. Twitter is one resource they should add to their list because they will find blogs, articles and videos that they would never be able to find on their own. There is just too much out in cyberspace to be able to find these resources through regular search engines.

Many times, there are educators who ask for help from their followers and the people they follow. Those questions are quickly answered and resources are often provided as well. Other times, when visiting Twitter educators will find conversations and read thought- provoking quotations and blogs on topics that may become a new interest for them.

Many schools no longer have a great deal of money to pay for professional development, which is unfortunate because those experiences can be very educational. The budgets that those school districts do have are earmarked for the best possible professional opportunities that will tie into district goals. Although conferences and one day trainings are always beneficial if educators put into it what they get out of it, Twitter offers daily professional development in the privacy of your own home.

Connecting with colleagues from all over the world who have similar interests is really amazing. As much as we may think we have it difficult in our present circumstances, which we do, connecting with educators in other countries helps to put things into perspective. Sometimes those educators have it much harder and need our help, and other times there are educators who are in schools that we find inspiring and give us something to work toward.

The following are some suggestions regarding Twitter:
* Although there are privacy settings, be careful what you write. Everything you post has a way to be public. Keep it respectful, as if your students or your grandmother was reading it.
* Make sure you watch the amount of time you spend on it. Hours can pass by you rather quickly when you are on Twitter. Don't forget to check in with your loved ones every once in a while!
* Twitter should never supplant professional development but it can supplement it during difficult financial times.

In the End
Connecting with likeminded educators from around the world can help lift us out of our present situations and give us something to strive for because some of these resources teach us how to live creatively within our parameters. Those likeminded educators can also help us meet the needs of our students. When we have exhausted all of our other resources that are within close proximity, Twitter provides us with resources that we may never knew existed.

Our students enter our classrooms coming from diverse backgrounds and they have been exposed to diverse experiences. Those experiences may have been helpful to their development, while other experiences may have been detrimental to their development. All of that diversity makes it hard to meet the needs of each and every student.

Although Twitter cannot solve all of the problems that our students have, it can provide educators with ways to help those students. In addition, it may help inspire educators to try new things in their classrooms. Who knows, it may even create a relationship where educators and their students can connect with other educators and students from across the globe, and open up new experiences for everyone involved.

Follow Peter on Twitter.

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Why Educators Should Join Twitter (Opinion)

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In late July I decided to join Twitter. To be perfectly honest with you I had no idea what I was supposed to do when I got on there but I heard so much about it I thought it would be a worthwhile experience.

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1) Create a Twitter account

2) Share out Twitter account names and follow each other

3) Find 5 people relevant to your position to follow

4) Ask any questions you might have.

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"We all know that education budgets are getting cut more and more, and that meaningful professional development opportunities have unfortunately become a bit of an oxymoron in education. Not only can being a "connected educator" help change that, but it can also provide you with ongoing inspiration and support. I'd even go as far to argue that being connected will be the most impactful thing you can do in your career." Elana Leoni, blogger for Edutopia.

I will even go far enough to say that becoming a connected educator is a Teacher Superpower!

While I can come up with pretty new and innovative ideas while planning inside my classroom, I can gain so much more from sharing my ideas, collecting ideas on Twitter (known jokingly as #ideabandits), and connecting with other educators to collaborate about even more inspiring ideas. This movement of becoming a connected educator is known as creating a Professional (or Personal) Learning Network, known as a PLN. I wholeheartedly believe that joining fellow educators on Twitter will impact you and your classroom more than you think. Just try it. What do you have to lose?

Get yourself logged onto Twitter and sign up for an account using your computer, iPad, or smartphone. It is really easy. You need to pick a Twitter handle. This will look like @____________. For example, I am known in the Twitter world as @AppEducationFox. If your whole name is no longer available, as in my case (@JoAnnFox was already in use) then feel free to get creative with your handle. A lot of educators add "edu" to their handle. So I could have chosen @FoxEdu. Try not to have a super long handle like mine since Twitter only allows you to use 140 characters in a tweet. You may be stuck at this step for some time, but keep at it! If you already have a twitter account that you made in college and you no longer like that handle, you can simply go into your settings and change your username! It's easy as pie.

Next step is to add an image of yourself. You don't want to be an egghead.

Last, add a bio. This step is important since you want others to know that you are on Twitter for the sole purpose to connect with other educators. Add a little bit about yourself like what grade level you teach and what your special interests in teaching are.

Here is an example of my bio. You can see that I also added a header photo. You can do that as well but that is not as important.

One last thing. You can make your Twitter account private so you have to approve everyone who follows you. If you want to do that, that is fine. However, I keep my profile public and here is why. The whole purpose for me to be on Twitter is not to share what my children are doing at the beach or to post pictures of my dinner. I am on Twitter with one goal: to connect with fellow educators and to continue my journey of being a life long learner of the teaching profession. If my purpose is to connect with educators, for me having my profile public is the best way for me to accomplish my goal.

Find other educators to follow! I have curated a list of teachers who inspire me on Twitter. If you follow this link you can begin following these amazing educators as well. This is a great start. Once you start following others, they will begin to follow you back, especially if you are not an "egghead" (have a picture of yourself) and you have included a bio.

Start watching your Twitter feed. This is also known as lurking and this is perfectly acceptable in the beginning. Those who you follow will be tweeting out links to articles, photos of their classrooms, or quoting speakers at educational conferences. If you find a tweet with a great link you can "retweet" that person's tweet. This basically means you just resend that exact same tweet to those who follow you but it adds the original tweeter's name to the tweet. You can also "favorite" a tweet if you like what someone said. This is similar to "liking" something on Facebook. And when you feel really comfortable, you can begin to reply to tweets. So if someone tweets something, you can to that tweet so you are speaking directly to that person. Remember, whatever is posted on Twitter is public.

If you happen to read a really wonderful article online, then you can be the one to Tweet that article to your followers. This where you give back to all those weeks of lurking. Now you are really using Twitter to not only gather new information, but to share it as well. Usually when you are reading an online article, there will be a Twitter link at the bottom of the article for you to share what you just read. At this point you may have your followers retweeting you, favoriting your link, or even replying to your tweet.

The Power is in the Hashtag!

This is perhaps THE most important part of using Twitter for professional development. The power is truly in the hashtag. Basically the hashtag is the pound symbol followed by words without spaces. For example, #thepowerisinthehashtag . Twitter created the hashtag as a way to categorize tweets and make them searchable. Now let me explain the hashtag a bit better. There are four main purposes for the hashtag.

Educational Categories: When I am tweeting about a great app that I use in the classroom, I usually follow my tweet with the hashtag #iosedapp. Many people in education use this hashtag to share apps. So if I want to find all the tweets about this I can go into the search window in Twitter and type #iosedapp, then select "all" and I can see all the tweets on Twitter with this tag. There are MANY educational hashtags out there and I highly recommend visiting @cybraryman1's website here. He has a list of all of them!

Just for Fun: Sometimes people use the hashtag as a sort of a joke or just to be silly or witty. Here are some examples of "just for fun" tags: #EduAwesome, #EduWin, #SaidNoTeacherEver.

Hashtags for Conferences: If you attend an educational conference there will usually be an official conference hashtag. For example, if you attended the ISTE conference people were using the tag #iste13. The tag was used to share what people were learning. But the truly amazing thing about conference hashtags is their tweets not only share with others at the conference, but are share with those who are not at the conference and using Twitter to follow the tag feed. While I was not at #iste13 you can bet I was following the tag from my home throughout the duration of the conference. If you happen to be at a conference that has not created an official tag, be the one to create one and share with others the power of Twitter.

Educational Chats (known as Edchats) : On any given day, at any given time, you will see some educational chat trending on Twitter. I kid you not! An edchat is a group of educators meeting on a certain day, at a certain time, to discuss educational issues. For example, every Sunday at 8pm Pacific Standard Time California educators collaborate using the hashtag #caedchat. Again, @cybrayman1 has a webpage with a schedule of all the Twitter chats. You do not need to be invited to join these chats. If you have an interest in the chat, then feel free to join!

Edchats always have a specific topic. For example, the #caedchat on July 17 is about student blogging. Edchats have moderators who lead the discussion (and I will be a moderator for #caedchat's topic about student blogging). The moderators pose questions with their tweets. Here is what a moderator question could look like.

Q1 How has student blogging impacted your students' writing success? #caedchat.

Notice the question begins with Q1. This means "question 1." Also, notice following the question is the #caedchat tag. Every single tweet in an edchat MUST have the chat's tag in it. The questions will stay live for about 5 mintues as everyone in the chat replies to the question posted. After about 5 minutes, the moderators will post another questions, this time beginning their tweet with "Q2." And so on and so forth.

The next step in an edchat is that anyone participating in the chat can answer the question. Yes! That means you! The answer tweet should look like this:

A1 When students blog, they have a better understanding of audience. #caedchat.

The answer always begins with A1, A2, A3, etc. (depending on which question you are answering). This keeps the chat organized. You can also tweet links to blogs and articles in your answers if they pertain to the topic. Don't forget to always follow your tweet with the edchat hashtag. In this example, I ended the tweet with #caedchat.

When I am in a Twitter chat, I prefer to use a Twitter client. I was using Tweetchat.com regularly up until about a month ago when it started to not work consistently. What I liked about Tweetchat was that it automatically added the hashtag to the end of my tweet. What I didn't like was how fast the Twitter feed moved. It was hard for me to keep up with the conversation, especially in a big chat like #caedchat. It works much better in a small chat like #4thchat.

I am now using TweetDeck. During a large Twitter chat like #caedchat I can have two columns opened for #caedchat. One that I allow to keep in time with the conversation, and one that I keep slower so I can attempt to read all of the tweets for the chat. Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman1) also suggests to have a column open just for the moderators. If you use this client, you have to remember to add the tag yourself at the end of your tweets. I just usually copy and past the tag in every time.

If this all sounds like too much, you can just use the Twitter webpage. In the search window, search your chat and be sure to click on "all" so you can see all the tweets in the chat.

My favorite thing about edchats is making new connections with teachers. If you participate in an edchat, be sure to follow your new #edubuddies.

Here is a video I made about how to participate in #caedchat:

You now have the power in your hands. Using Twitter for professional development is dependent entirely on you. If you just visit every now and then, your learning will be minimal. If you make connections, participate in edchats, find colleagues in your area willing to meet with you for a#CoffeeCue, and begin to add to the steady flow of educational discussions you will certainly be a changed educator forever.

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"We all know that education budgets are getting cut more and more, and that meaningful professional development opportunities have unfortunately become a bit of an oxymoron in education. Not only can being a "connected educator" help change that, but it can also provide you with ongoing inspiration and support.

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Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

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Chris Messana was the first guy to share a tweet containing a hashtag back on August of 2008. Since then, hashtags have become the most popular communicational medium of choice for television shows, political campaigns, educational news and updates, commercials, and also an icon of the 21st century pop culture.

So, what is a hashtag ?
Here is what Twitter said about it : " The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. Hashtags are a great way to build community around content."

Who can use Hashtags?
To be able to use a hashtag, you only need to have an active Twitter account. Hahstags are embedded within tweets and they do not belong to anyone. Once the hashtag is created and goes viral, nobody can control it and everybody can use it.

How can I create a hashtag ?
It is very easy to create a hashtag but before you do so, you need to have a clear objective behind creating such a hashtag. For instance, as a teacher, I would create a hashtag for my ICT students and label that hashtag #ictclass. Now I can easily add #ictclass to anything I find online related to what I teach in this class and any student accessing the hashtag #ictclass would be able to see all the tweets with the cited hashtag.

Why using a hashtag ?
Hashtags enable you to :

Categorize tweets that contain relevant keywords or phrases

Hashtags help tweets get popular and be displayed in search result pages

They can occur anywhere be it the end , middle or beginning of the Tweet

Hashtags make it easy to aggregate like-minded Twitter users under a certain category

Examples of some great educational hashtags :
1- #edtech
This is one of my favorite hashtags on Twitter. It provides you with news, tips, tools.....etc on the use of technology in education

2-#edapp
If you are interested in discovering and learning more about the use of educational apps in teaching, edapp is a hashtag to follow.

3-#edchat
This is one of the popular hashtags and it is a great way for you to meet other teachers from all around the world and stay updated about the trending topics in education.

4-#edreform
This one stands for education reform and it speaks for itself , when you join this chat you will have the chance to explore what educators are sharing on educational issues.

5-#elearning
Using this hashtag you can connect with other people interested in online and electronic learning and also distance learning.

6-#mlearning
This hashtag stands for mobile learning and it features all the tweets relating to the use of mobile devices in learning.

7-#stem
This is a hashtag that allows you to stay updated about the issues related to science, technology and education.

8-#ntchat
This is hashtag created by Edutopia last May it stands for New Teacher chat

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A Simple Guide on The Use of Hashtag for Teachers

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Chris Messana was the first guy to share a tweet containing a hashtag back on August of 2008. Since then, hashtags have become the most popular communicational medium of choice for television shows, political campaigns, educational news and updates, commercials, and also an icon of the 21st century pop culture.

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A Teacher's 3 Different Twitter Accounts

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A Teacher's 3 Different Twitter Accounts