Uses of Twitter for a Teacher

The more I use Twitter the more I come to realize the potential it has more everyone.  Now I know what you are thinking Twitter is for people to say what they are having for lunch or to share this cool picture of their cat doing something stupid, well yes some people use it that way but that is not the best use of Twitter and you do not have to follow them so you will not see it.  Twitter can become a great source of information about anything you are interested in and it also can be used to crowd source ideas and questions.

Here are a few ways that I am using Twitter:

1. I follow about 70 teachers and educators around the world that have interesting things to discuss and share.  This allows me to keep on the pulse of technology in the classroom and gives me great ideas for these tech tips.  You can find teachers to follow at http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com/w/page/22554534/FrontPage
2. I regularly look at three hash tag feeds.  They are #EdChat, #EdTech, and #MathChat.  These are hash tags that anyone can use to share information about these topics.  This gives me access to the world that I am not following but are still talking about things I am interested in.  You can find hash tags you want to follow at http://www.cybraryman.com/edhashtags.html
3. I also participate weekly in twitter discussions.  #EdChat has their discussions on Tuesdays at noon EST and 7pm EST every week.  Each week has different topics that are discussed and it gives you access to what other people are thinking and also gives you the ability to share your views with the rest of the world.
4. Last week I introduced one of the twitter papers (http://paper.li) and this is a great way to catch up on things you might have missed because Twitter never stops flowing.
5. I use a program called TweetDeck (http://www.TweetDeck.com) to make looking at Twitter manageable since it gives me columns of information.

I hope that you take the plunge and look at twitter as a professional resource tool.  Honestly I find it more useful than any PD that I have gone to because it is teachers helping teachers.