Twitter+for+Educators

= To Tweet Or Not To Tweet =

A lot of people use Twitter, obviously, but how is micro-blogging interesting for a teacher or education personnel in general? I think it's an amazing tool for professional development and so do quite a few very interesting pedagogues from all over the world. In this 5 minutes-or-so video (the end credits take a couple of minutes ;o), I explain some of the advantages of using Twitter in such a context. Let me know what you think @malalande on Twitter or "like" or comment the video right here on YouTube.

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== ==[|3 tips for teachers new to Twitter] ==

=100 Twitter Tips For Teachers = ==Read this article here ==

==Social media help schools build bridges ==

Districts consider personal, professional use of social media
=Twitter & Twitterfall =

Brief overview of how to use Twitter, hashtags, and how to use Twitterfall.com to participate in Twitter Chats!

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==45 Simple Twitter Tips Everyone Should Know About ==

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== ==How does #Edchat connect educators? ==

=What I value the most about being a “connected” educator is that it improves my ability to be a “connecting” educator.=

==TOP 10 EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY HASHTAGS FOR EDUCATORS ==

 Can Twitter Replace Traditional Professional Development? <span style="background-color: #ffffff; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 20px; text-align: left;"> http://hechingered.org/content/can-twitter-replace-traditional-professional-development_5315/ <span style="background-color: #ffffff; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 20px; text-align: left;">

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 20px; text-align: left;">Resetting Education: Social networks for the classroom <span style="background-color: #ffffff; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Learning doesn't happen in a vacuum; how social networks are adding a new dimension <span style="background-color: #ffffff; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;"> Read more at [|http://vator.tv/news/2012-07-30-resetting-education-social-networks-for-the-classroom#S0cMCSpJL59H36b6.99] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;">

=[|The 100 Best Twitter Tools for Schools]=

The 100 Best Twitter Tools for Teachers

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= = An Open Letter to Educators =

If the message in this video resonates with you feel free to send it to any teachers, principals, professors, university presidents, boards of regents, boards of education, etc. you think should see it.

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= = Best Practices in Social Networking for Educators | ASCD11 Interview with Eric Sheninger  =

Learn how one principal went from being anti-social media to being known as 'Mr. Twitter' by his students in our ASCD 2011 interview with Eric Sheninger.

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=Articles about Twitter and other social media= =Facebook and Classroom Community= =<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,Times,serif; font-size: 32px;">Be better and more efficient on Twitter =

<span style="color: #cd1713; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 20px; vertical-align: baseline;">How Twitter can be used as a powerful educational tool
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: block; font-family: Palatino,Georgia,Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;">=<span style="font-family: Palatino,Georgia,Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 1.33em; text-align: start;">How Twitter can be used as a powerful educational tool =

Think Twitter is just a waste of time? Think again. Its organizational structure makes it an effective tool for connecting with students and others online
By Alan November and Brian Mull Read more by [|Contributor] Learning how to filter through tweets will bring clarity and meaning to Twitter and will get you past the mosh pit of random thoughts and lackluster chitchat. //(**Editor’s note**: This is part three in a series of articles about how to build students’ web literacy and research skills. In case you missed them, here are parts one and two .)// On Feb. 10, 2011, the world was transfixed on the protests raging in Egypt. We all watched as thousands gathered in Tahir square, where they had been for the past several weeks, to listen to a speech by President Hosni Mubarak. Many figured this would be his resignation speech. Instead, it offered the citizens of Egypt very little in the way of change, even if it was being presented as something positive. For outsiders looking in, it seemed that the situation would only get worse. What Mubarak might not have known is that while he was trying to maintain his iron grip on power, thousands of Egyptians were tweeting about their frustration with the dictator. Eventually, the people on the street, armed with nothing more than a cell phone and a free social media site, changed the course of history. If you are a middle or high school social studies teacher, and you wanted to provide your students with a close-up view of the events unfolding in Egypt, you could turn to a traditional news service. Or, you could follow the hashtag //#Egypt//on Twitter and tap into the real-time pulse of unfolding events by people on the streets of Cairo. Through our previous articles, we have introduced you to three pillars we believe are essential to be web literate. We have shown you how to use advanced search techniques to raise the quality of information found on the web, and we have explained how the information you find can be organized into a comprehensive library of knowledge using powerful web tools like Diigo. In this final part to the series, we will demonstrate how tools like Twitter can allow a researcher to share what is learned with the world, tap the knowledge of others to help make even stronger connections with the material, and even provide students with real-world problems at a moment’s noticeAttend Alan November’s premier ed-tech conference and get $100 off the cost of registration! For more information about Building Learning Communities 2012, to be held in Boston July 15-20, click here. Get $100 off the cost of registration when you enter the promo code **eSchoolMedia12**. At first glance, Twitter doesn’t appear to hold much value. Who cares about Justin Bieber’s haircuts! In fact, we both saw it as a waste and quit using it two or three times until we truly understood the organizational structure of information within this tool. Learning how to filter through tweets, organized using hashtags, will bring clarity and meaning to Twitter and will get you past the mosh pit of random thoughts and lackluster chitchat. A hashtag is nothing more than a word or phrase (with no spaces) that is preceded by a //#// symbol. Examples include #edchat, #london2012, and #youthvote. Simply type a hashtag like one of these into Twitter’s search box to immediately generate results that are focused around the topic of your choice. Tagging is a beautiful thing, and a tag is something you can invent at any moment. If you’re interested in a topic, but you don’t know of a hashtag that will be helpful with your research, simply do a search in Twitter using a keyword rather than a hashtag. Then, scan the results to see what hashtags people are using when they are discussing that particular topic. For example, Brian did this the evening of President Mubarak’s speech, and he discovered that the two most popular hashtags being used at that time were #Egypt and #Jan25. By looking through the resources he found, he was able to see what the world was saying about this event. But then, Brian took it a step further.

<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: block; font-family: Palatino,Georgia,Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;"> Page 2 of 3 === Think Twitter is just a waste of time? Think again. Its organizational structure makes it an effective tool for connecting with students and others online === By Alan November and Brian Mull Read more by [|Contributor] He began a new Twitter post and typed in: //I wonder if the people in #Egypt are buying this? #Jan25// Upon posting, his message immediately gained a global audience interested in this topic. Within minutes, he had a response back from a woman in Cairo who confirmed his thinking: The Egyptians weren’t buying it at all! They chatted for a while, and at the conclusion of their conversation, he asked if she would be willing to Skype into a class of middle school students and teachers with whom he was working the next day. She agreed, and the students were able to ask her questions about what they had seen on television the evening before, about life in Egypt, and about her hopes for Egypt’s future. It was a powerful moment for everyone involved. Reflecting back on this series of events, we have learned to appreciate the power of a social media tool such as Twitter to provide information and global communication. The role and knowledge of the educator is more important than ever in understanding how to use these tools to bring authentic experiences to our students. Unfortunately, many students do not see the educational value of a tool they might be using every day. > Attend Alan November’s premier ed-tech conference and get $100 off the cost of registration! > For more information about Building Learning Communities 2012, to be held in Boston July 15-20, click here. Get $100 off the cost of registration when you enter the promo code **eSchoolMedia12**. Any school or classroom can begin using Twitter as an important part of the learning process. To help the beginners out, we’ve developed a list of educational hashtags that can be used by teachers and students who are looking to connect beyond the classroom. Our recommendation is to print this list and hang it in the classroom near a computer. With a classroom account (under a teacher’s login and password), anyone in the class can tweet out questions requesting resources or sharing the learning that is taking place in that class. The appropriate hashtags should accompany each message. These messages might look like this: //Looking for global classrooms that can record their local water data to share with us over the next 12 months. #scichat// //We are looking to shake up professional development in our district. What are some unique models you use. #profdev// //Our class is looking to collaborate with another class to write and produce a PSA on #bullying and #cybersafety.// In addition to using Twitter as a way to connect globally, we’ve also seen examples of classrooms using Twitter as a way to share learning opportunities with others outside of the classroom. For example, supplementary photo and video tools provide the ability to share learning from anywhere someone can access an internet connection. This could be in a classroom, it could be on a field trip, or—as Jessica Caviness from Coppell High School in Texas explained to us—it could even be from a baseball game. Mrs. Caviness was a new Twitter user who had attended a workshop of ours. Upon getting back to school, she told her geometry students that she just got a Twitter account. After jokingly welcoming her to the 21st century, students immediately began taking out their cell phones and following her. Then, a few nights later at a Texas Rangers baseball game, she was reminded of a problem from class a few weeks earlier. She decided to tweet the following, and within minutes, she had several replies from her students.

<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: block; font-family: Palatino,Georgia,Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 18px; text-align: justify;"> Page 3 of 3 === Think Twitter is just a waste of time? Think again. Its organizational structure makes it an effective tool for connecting with students and others online === By Alan November and Brian Mull Read more by [|Contributor]

Days later, at yet another game, Mrs. Caviness decided to dig a bit deeper into students’ thinking. She tweeted a new picture and asked students to develop related problems.

Again, students jumped on this opportunity immediately. Before the game was over, she had quite a collection of student-created problems, including:

What Mrs. Caviness found most exciting was the fact that students dropped everything they were doing at home so that they could connect with her around these short math blasts. Now, Mrs. Caviness sees many applications for using this tool to strengthen what students do at school each day and to build a library of material that she and her students can use in a flipped classroom environment. We invite you to read more about her class and their uses of Twitter here. You might also choose to follow Mrs. Caviness on Twitter. We believe that there are three essential skills represented by the stories in this article: Like Mrs. Caviness, we believe educators should be powerful role models and provide examples of how to use the most powerful social media tools to expand the boundaries of learning. Otherwise, our students might only end up following #Bieberhair. Let us know your thoughts. //Alan November is the founder and Brian Mull is the director of innovation at November Learning. They invite your questions through their website at// [|//http://www.novemberlearning.com//] //.// //Join Alan, Brian, and other educators from around the world at the Building Learning Communities conference (BLC12) in Boston this July, where Eli Pariser, author of// The Filter Bubble//, will be one of the keynote speakers. Use the discount key **eSchoolMedia12**to get $100 off the cost of registration; go to// [|//http://blcconference.com//] //.//
 * Teachers should have the skill set to build their own personal learning networks (PLNs) to be global.
 * Teachers should be able to leverage their PLNs to bring the challenge of authentic conversation to their students.
 * Teachers should be able to use social media to connect their students to real-world problems.

=How to use Twitter...= A simple step-by-step tutorial that explains all you need to know on joining and using Twitter, from "Following" friends and posting "Tweets" to "Hash-tagging" and getting the most out of it, brought to you by Al Jazeera Unplugged.

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= D123 Twitter Video =

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= Why Educators should be using Twitter - Justin Tarte  =

I created this video to help share the power of Twitter for Educators. Bringing some of the best Educators together from around the world to learn, share and collaborate is the perfect path toward growth and development.

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