Twitter More Than Just A Fad

For most people, Twitter is just a social networking site that people use to tell followers what they are doing but in the world of education it can be much more than that. Twitter can be used for many great things in education, some being informal personal networks, learning from others and it is also a great way to keep up with current trends in education. For first year teachers coming straight from college are use to using technology such as twitter and feel more comfortable using it. These new teachers enjoy being a part of informal personal networks with mentors online helping them in their first year of teaching. Many teachers now enjoy using technology and have been able to integrate it into helping them become a better teacher.
Twitter is a way to link teachers all together to talk about what is going on in their classroom and teachers can talk about what works and does not work in the classroom. People can follow whomever they wanting giving them the ability to only look at topics they care about. From one article, Christopher Bergeron, a district-level technical coordinator from New Hampshire, states "Twitter is like the ticker at the bottom of CNN -- only a ticker populated with information about those people or things you care about, want to learn from, or want to know about". Twitter being used as a way of learning from others has started a new idea, Professional Learning Network. 
A Professional Learning Network is using twitter to follow people whom one can learn from and take their ideas and incorporate the ideas into their classrooms. From an article by Tom Whitby he states "building a PLN consisting of quality educators, who responsibly share quality information and sources, takes time and requires a plan". Whitby believes that finding the correct people to follow is easy but vital to creating a proper and useful PLN. He also states the the best way to find people who are reliable on twitter or those that are retweeted often and make sure to check their profile to make sure they are a professional educator. 
Hashtags can be very useful for teacher to easily find topics they are interested in or an idea they need in their classroom. In Whitby's article he gives some examples of good hashtags to pay follow such as #Edchat, #Edtech, #SSchat, and #CPchat. 

In this video Ashley Cross talks about how twitter can be useful for teachers and also goes into how important hashtags can be. She understands that finding the right people or the right hashtags to follow can be challenging, so she introduces views to @cybraryman. He has a website that can help people find hashtags that are appropriate and his website only contains hashtags for education. He has his website divided up so that a teacher can go onto his wesbite and find exactly what hashtag they need for a particular subject area. Cross also goes into Twitter chats that people can be apart of to see what is interesting topics are being talked about in the world of education. 
Now a days with growing technology, all teachers need to be keeping up with technology and utilizing it. Twitter is a great way to learn about new ideas for the classroom or even getting help to plan certain lessons. 

References 
 
National Education Association (2013). Can Tweeting Help Your Teaching?. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.nea.org/home/32641.htm . [Last Accessed 28 October 2013].

 Tom Whitby (2013). Building a professional learning network on Twitter. [ONLINE] Available at: http://smartblogs.com/education/2013/01/11/twitter-strategy-101/. [Last Accessed 28 October 2013].

Ashley Cross (2013). Twitter for Educators . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQv1PR2BKk8 . [Last Accessed 28 October 2013].

Anne-Caroline Paucot (2011). Etwitdeur. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.dicodufutur.org/category/education/. [Last Accessed e.g. 28 October 2013].