A couple of weeks ago I wrote about podcasts (and referenced the fantastic chat with Pernille Ripp) and how they can be a fantastic source of professional learning. Just listening to other professionals doing the same thing you do and hearing HOW they go about their job can be SO informative! This week I would like to draw your attention to Twitter!
For me, Twitter is hands down, without a doubt, the single BEST professional learning tool available! Why, I hear you ask? Well, here's why...
Teaching, like a lot of other professions out there, is a job that REQUIRES us to be constantly learning because our job is so dynamic (in a changing-all-the-time sense). Teaching is also a profession where one of the best ways to get better is to watch/talk to/ask questions of a colleague. Some of us are lucky enough to have colleagues in the same building who we can do that with (as an aside, if you don't, I would URGE you to start looking now!). Some of us may be the only teacher of that subject, or the only person in that role within the school, so making those connections is a little more difficult. So, enter Twitter.
Twitter is at it's heart, a community notice board. You want to tell the world something? You compose a short (160 character) message and "tweet" it, or "post it" or "pin it onto the noticeboard". You don't get to choose who listens. You just put it out there. If that was all, then Twitter would be rather useless. But that is the less interesting part of it.
Twitter is all about LISTENING!
The REAL power of Twitter lies in your ability to choose who you listen to, or in Twitter parlance, who you choose to "follow". At last estimate, there are around 288 million active Twitter users. That is one HUGE noticeboard! But you don't have to listen to all of them. You get to choose. And here is where the professional learning begins to take shape.
Of that 288 million, there are a handful (probably in the thousands) of active twitter users who do exactly the same job as you. And they regularly "tell the world something" about their job. It might be a cool resource they have just found. Or it might be about something they tried in the classroom. Or it might be a question they have about the course they are teaching. Because you do the same job, those resources, ideas and questions might be useful to you. My experience has been (and continues to be) that these resources, ideas and questions are the most useful source of professional learning you can get your hands on.
So what is the catch I hear you asking? It can't be that easy!
So OK, there is a catch. The "work" is in finding who is worth listening to. As you might guess, not everyone is "telling the world something" that is necessarily worth listening to. Do I care what Justin Bieber had for breakfast? Do I care who Miley Cyrus is saying happy birthday to?? NO! So I don't "follow" them. I follow people who are doing the same thing as me, who "tell the world" interesting stuff about how they are doing their thing. And that took a little bit of time and trial and error.
So, now that I have convinced you of how fantastic Twitter is :-), here is my advice...
- Download an app (Twitter, Tweetdeck, etc) and use Twitter through the app. The website is good, but an app makes it a little more deliberate.
- Use Twitter to listen. Don't feel you need to start posting anything.
- Find one person worth following. Check out who they are following and then follow some of those people.
- "Follow" no more than 30 people when you first start.
- When you do start posting, consider replying to "tweets" from those you follow.
- Share the love! If you find something really useful on Twitter, let your colleagues know about it (and that you found it through Twitter!)
