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Talking Twitter

Up until March 2013 (my senior year of college), I was against using Twitter. At all. I thought it was unnecessary. I think I tweeted out a couple of times before taking about a year hiatus from using the app/website. When I moved into a role student teaching at a technologically innovative school, I saw my mentor using Twitter to tweet out what her class was doing. I also remember her telling me that I was going to have to use Twitter during my six-week session lead teaching. 

Fast forward to 2017. Over 1,190 tweets later I have seen the value of using Twitter in education for two reasons. Every teacher should have one. 

Reason 1: It's a way to communicate with parents if your district lets you tweet out pictures of students at work as long as they remain anonymous. I created my own class account to do this called Miss Norman's class. I haven't had a chance to use it but I plan to at my next school! A great way to do this is to have students write the short tweet out on paper and then post the tweet yourself. If you have parents who don't want the whole world to see their child's pictures you can even password protect your account. 

Reason 2: It's amazing for professional development even if your class itself doesn't tweet. In my first district, I was hesitant to tweet out pictures of my students at work. My professional learning network (PLN) grew substantially when I started using my personal account (@ElleNorman4) for this reason. I love to share what I've learned at professional development conferences (TCEA, iPadpalooza, ISTE) and constantly am tweeting at these events. Everyone is. Right now, I'm browsing Twitter using the hashtags #iste17 and #notatiste17 to find out all the cool things educators are learning and sharing. During the remainder of the time, I like it to tweet out articles I find online as well as browse my PLN for new ideas, articles and book recommendations. While a majority of my Twitter is for educator purposes, non-education related do make their way onto my profile. Most recently, I live tweeted the Tonys. My obsession with theatre and the value of it in education could have its own blog post, and that's a story for another day.

Happy Tweeting!  

-Elle

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