Twitter for Teachers - To Tweet or Not To Tweet!

For many teachers Twitter is like a swimming pool.  There is the initial hesitation because the water will be cold even though we know it will be refreshing.  Once the decision is made to enter the water, there are those who do the "toe-dip", those who ease each body part in slowly and then those people who run up to the pool and jump in over the side.  This is very similar to getting started on Twitter.  As a teacher, you're not sure about using it for school because of your fears involving social media in the classroom.  However, you hear how other people are using it and it sounds very intriguing.  Once you overcome that obstacle, you may dip your toe by following a few people.  You may slowly ease into it by searching hashtags (#).  Finally, after the water warms up you will be tweeting 140 characters at a time as a part of the "conversation".

For the sake of readability...this topic will be broken up into five posts, with a new post appearing each day this week.  Today's post will be about why educators have turned to Twitter.

In it's simplest form, Twitter is a user sharing a thought (up to 140 characters) with the world.  In the classroom you can use Twitter to do much more, such as...

• send out reminders to your students and/or parents
• follow other users and learn from them
• tweet questions to the universe looking for feedback
• use hashtags to join a conversation
• share updates such as pictures, links and more with your followers

The list goes on and on.  If you would like to read more about how teachers are using Twitter in their classroom you can check out this Teach HUB post which has "50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom".  If you are somewhat intrigued by this social phenomenon, check out tomorrow's post which will review setting up and account and things you should consider as an educator.