Creating Your PLN Using Twitter

Gina Hartman, Educational Technology Specialist from Francis Howell School District has made a great presentation about how Twitter and wikis can be used by teachers to create their own personal learning network and allow themselves to connect with others from around the world. 

To help teachers in this process, Gina has set up a wiki Twitter4Teachers which contains pages of useful contacts divided up according to subject and area of interest. The page for foreign languages teachers is here and features a wealth of MFL colleagues who are already using the microblogging tool to feed their PLN.

For those who still haven't understood what all the fuss is about Twitter, I suggest you first need to follow a core of people who are like-minded and wish to connect with you, then add more followers you come across via others' messages or your own research. The usefulness of the community you choose to set up is exemplified by the quote of high profile twitterer Drew Buddie a.k.a digitalmaverick who recently said in The Telegraph that "Twitter is my Google" 

Although Twitter is not a traditional search engine designed to find facts and content quickly and easily, some would argue that it is a gateway to the most current thoughts and ramblings of millions of people around the world. For this reason, power users like Drew prefer it to Google as they can not only find out up to date information very quickly but that they value the personal endorsements and objective advice that come with it in the same way that Amazon reviews help you to decide what to buy.

For teachers interested in educational technology, Twitter can prove an invaluable way of receiving trustworthy information on the latest piece of kit/website from colleagues who are actually using it in their classrooms. Likewise, it can serve as a useful back-channel to a conference presentation allowing the audience to focus and share ideas while their creative juices are flowing.

Microblogging can also be a powerful tool in and out of the classroom. See Tom Barrett's presentation Nineteen Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom for some inspiration. His use of Twitter for live feedback is particularly impressive. Have a look too at Anne Mirtschin's post My class was all a-Twitter for another great example.

Supportive collaboration between people who may only know each other through their online connections can be seen on a daily basis on Twitter and perhaps explains one reason why it is such a popular tool amongst educators worldwide. Many state that thanks to Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, blogs, wikis and podcasts they have been able to greatly enhance their own continuous professional development (CPD) and learn an unimaginable amount from the kindness of strangers as well as people they have met in person.

The problem with deciding to follow hundreds or even thousands of people though is that you are faced by the dilemma of whether to sift through everyone's messages (not to be recommended) or run the risk of missing out on something important. If this situation applies to you, I suggest you use Twitter Search to create RSS feeds for all those people who you are particularly interested in (your core group)and then subscribe to them in Google Reader so you can read their messages all in one place when you have the time.

To do this, go to Twitter Search and put in the username of someone you want to follow then click on Search to generate the latest results. Click on the link Feed for this query on the right hand side of the page and copy the feed in the address bar which should look like the example below with the name of the person you want to track replaced by the word username:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?lang=en&q=username

In Google Reader, click the Add a subscription button and paste in the feed. Click Add and wait until the messages load. When you've finished scanning the tweets, click the Mark all as read button and you're done. Now whenever a new tweet is sent or someone replies to the person you are tracking, you will see all their messages appear in bold in your reader like in your email client. To help you manage your subscriptions, you can create different folders and assign all your Twitter feeds to the same one. Easy.

Here are some lovely, enthusiastic and helpful language teachers from the UK who I'm sure would love to hear from you and help get you started:

1_kiwi_chick, actualleigh, adamsutcliffe, aliceayel, amandasalt, annagrainger, astrinity, atantot, aurelagazel, bellaale, blagona, canard2008, CarpsofStDay, charte, daisybundle, danieleur, dernley, Debs1302, dominic_mcg, educ8me, elstriker, estherhardman, froggy29400, froggyval, gaelle15, german_tutor, gillottsmfl, gorsey, helenmyers, henriettemfl, huguettemf, icpjones, jendav, jjpadvis, josepicardo, jowinchester, Kath52, kaymcmeekin, kmetsch8, langwitch, louiseCrossley, lisibo, lynnehorn, lwelsh, mariefrance, markpentleton, missferretti, moodlefairy, mrslwalker, mrsmfl, mrsnpalmer, neildjones, nicpearson, northgatemfl, petitejoueuse, PrinceLanguages, painsleymfl, reesiepie, robertgreen, sam_enerve, sghani, sgiller, spanishsam, strychy, suzibewell, tortugueta, valleseco, veneziabonita, wizenedcrone, yorksmum

Why not follow some of these innovative and creative practitioners and see what effect it has? Like Suzi, you may find the experience highly rewarding.

 

Although obviously not everyone will want to enGorse the power of Twitter! But there Hugo!

 

Comments

[Lynne]

Welcome back Joe! Can only agree - learned so much from Twitter over last year and a bit.

[Joe Dale]

Cheers Lynne. It's nice to be back ;)

[Isabelle Jones]

Nice to hear from you on here!
On top of all the benefits of Twitter from a professional point of view, having had a tough time at the beginning of the year, I can say that Twitter was also a great personal support to me. Twitter-counselling next??
Isabelle
http://isabellejones.blogspot.com

[Joe Dale]

Thanks Isabelle. I agree totally with your sentiments here and have certainly found Twitter a great support too recently :)

[Anne Mirtschin]

Hey Joe, good to see you back on the blogging. My personal twitter network has made a huge impact on my teaching, ability to take up the emerging technologies and take away the isolation of teaching on a small staff in a small country school. I think we are only just beginning to see the full power that twitter can give us from both a staff and student aspect. In the last week, I have broadened the people I follow and that has been another interesting development - just wish there were 36 hours in a day.

[asalt]

Thanks for the mention, Joe. Twitter is one of several things I started this academic year, and I will never look back! PS Glad you are back, chico :-)

[Louise Crossley]

Glad to see you are feeling better. I feel famous too in one of your posts! Will you be going to London on Wednesday? Hope to see you there.

[Alex Blagona]

Welcome back, Joe, and what a great post. The first time I dabbled with Twitter about 12 months ago, I wasn't really ready for it, but now there are so many people in my PLN who have great advice and views on the things that interest me in my teaching, I wouldn't be without it!

[Joe Dale]

Thanks for all your comments guys :)

@louise - unfortunately I won't be there on Wednesday, but I will be thinking of you all. Am concentrating on getting back into school routine and working up to teaching a whole day not just mornings. Hope to see you soon.

[Creativeedu]

This is a really interesting blog post. I'm keen to share it with a friend but (ironically) could not find the share via twitter button. Most likely me being very daft! I will cut and paste the old fashioned way.

I look forward to reading your future posts.

[Joe Dale]

Thanks for your comment creativeedu! I've just added the Tweet button to the top left of my blog which should make it easier now to share content.

Best wishes

Joe