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How To Bookmark Twitter Links
182 years ago
One of the issues with using Twitter is dealing with the huge number of useful links that stream through every day. Delicious has always been the way I organise my bookmarks but I want to bookmark so many sites that I could spend all day manually adding them.
Even with the little Delicious bookmarklet the work-flow of saving links from Twitter was so time consuming that I stopped doing it. However recently I have found a solution that automatically saves links from Twitter – this has revitalised my use of Delicious and means I can bookmark whilst using Twitter.
This little application looks at your own Tweets and saves anything with links as Delicious bookmarks. To set it up it is just a case of linking the two accounts (Delicious+Twitter). A BETA app by Marc Mims I have found this to be a brilliant and simple way to store links. Here are some features that make it so useful:
- The simple work-flow is crucial. When I retweet a link or share one in my own tweets, the URL will be automatically saved in Delicious.
- Packrati.us converts Twitter hashtags to Delicious tags. Essential to help you find the links again later.
- Twitter favourites are bookmarked too.
- Existing bookmarks will be replaced (this is an option in the preferences which gives you lots of ways to fine tune the process).
- You are able to say which sources to exclude from this process, I don’t want my Posterous 365 links to be saved so I have added it as a source to exclude.
Here is how the process looks, first a tweet:
Here is the corresponding tweet automatically saved as a Delicious bookmark,
Packrati.us was easy to setup and it quietly gets on with saving my bookmarks whilst I use Twitter. It has been exactly the sort of little application that I have been looking for to integrate my use of these two great services.
I have also found ReadTwit, from Lionite, useful to snag links from all of the people I follow on Twitter into an RSS reader.
Readtwit filters your twitter feed to links only, resolves link destinations and publishes the content as an RSS feed. You can then use any feed reading software / service to read twitter posted content along with the rest of your feeds.
The feed is pretty busy so I mainly use it for data-mining and searching for interesting resources or if I have something specific in mind. I find it less useful than Packrati.us though because I have less control over what appears there.
With Packrati.us I can choose exactly what I want to save and tag it too, it is Twitter bookmarking. If you are like me there was always links that I thought useful, never saved them and then cursed the fact as I desperately tried to find them later. Perhaps those days are over.
What processes or application do you currently use to save links from Twitter? Can you recommend any other tools that facilitates this process?
#newleaders
12 years ago
Doug Belshaw and Stuart Ridout were instrumental in the production of the fantastic #movemeon book,
“Tips, ideas and suggestions for all teachers from the Twitter community.”
The book was created from the tweets of fellow Twitter users, all collated with the #movemeon hashtag.
Another effort was soon started after this one titled #newleaders. I will soon be one of these new leaders and so this week I asked Stuart Ridout if we could give it a fresh look.
The tag has gained momentum over the last few days with hundreds of tips and ideas suggested about school leadership.
You can see all the tweets here at TwapperKeeper.
For the first book it took over 300 individual ideas, tweeted with the tag, to produce the book.
This is the edu-Twitter community press!
Crowd-sourcing the sort of professional development advice we need. The power of this sort of advice is in the origin: our peers.
I have no doubt that in time other topics will emerge we can contribute to. If each of us makes a single 140 character contribution we can achieve so much together as a community.
Please help with this new book by writing a tweet with your leadership advice and don’t forget the hashtag…
#newleaders
Optimus Prime Cartoon Style Robot Mode by frog DNA
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Seeing Ripples
52 years ago
When you share your classroom experiences and ideas, one thing you hope for is that they are transferable to other classrooms. This week I was delighted to see three examples of my ideas being successfully applied elsewhere.
The first is from Peter Richardson a primary school teacher in Preston who took my idea for using Voicethread for peer assessment of writing and used it for work in their Egyptian work. Here is the Voicethread he shared.
Kevin McLaughlin is a Year 4 teacher in Leicester and after reading my blog post about using Twitter and Google Forms for a data handling lesson, has applied the same ideas himself. His class compared music tastes from Kevin’s Twitter network (via a Google Form) with their own. I am pleased it worked well for his Year 4 class too, as Kevin explains,
The data that we now have will be used next week in further Maths lessons and the children added that they will continue to use the survey over the weekend at home and with friends. Real data from real people. This is what makes this type of investigation so very useful and brings an added dimension to data collection activities.
The final ripple I caused comes from Jan Webb another Year 4 teacher in Cheshire. Jan took up the challenge of using my Maths Maps idea with her class and developed a series of activities in a Google Map of Berlin for her class to use.
View Berlin in a larger map
Jan explains on her blog how they enjoyed using the resource in her class.
…a great deal of discussion arose from finding the shapes in some of the buildings and finding how many rectangles we could see in a building! We all really enjoyed these tasks and they not only let us discuss aspects of shape, but also provoked discussions about aspects of life in Germany.
These ripples are very encouraging as you are able to clearly see the effect sharing your own practice has on other teachers and subsequently other children’s learning.
If you have always thought about starting a blog but never got round to it, why not give it a go. The more pebbles in the pond causing ripples the better.
Marmite: Love it or Hate it? – Using Google Forms and Twitter
82 years ago
Over the next two weeks in our year 5 class we will be exploring data investigation and the tools with which we can use to undertake them. The first three days of this week we will be looking at some technology that can enhance data handling and make our life easier. In today’s session we learned about Google Forms and I demonstrated how they work with the help of my Twitter network.
We wanted to achieve three things from our maths session today
- Make a short survey using a Google Form.
- Complete other people’s surveys and get a feel for the process.
- Review the data added to our own and explore some of the ways it is represented.
After placing the lesson in the context you see in the first paragraph, I began the session by explaining that I was going to use my Twitter network to help demonstrate how we can use Google Forms to collect data.
I spent some time with the class going through the process of creating a Form from the Google Docs home screen and then adding my questions and running through the different types of questions you can use. We talked a lot about how this type of data collection is only good for some occasions and a pencil and paper method can still be the best way. It is a matter of choosing the most appropriate.
The class would be making a simple favourites or preference type survey and so our shared one was similar. You can see it embedded in the post below.
Once complete, I sent out the link to this to my Twitter network (Look at the bottom of the Form edit page for the link – I used bit.ly to shorten it for Twitter, more on that later!) I did this because I wanted the children to see data being added, I wanted to demonstrate the moment of data submission from the Google Form. This also helps the children see how a spreadsheet is linked to the form. (15 minutes)
We switched to the spreadsheet and the children thought it was rather magical as the responses started to drop into the cells as we watched. I reminded them that as soon as someone clicks SUBMIT we were seeing the result.
The children then worked in groups of three with a single laptop (2 groups per table) – one of the children signed into their Google Docs (part of Google Apps for Education) account and created their own “Favourites” Google Form. To keep the children focused I asked them to only give 5 choices for their questions otherwise they tend to get longwinded and only create one or two questions. (15 minutes)
One of the useful things about writing up lesson experiences on my blog is that it is wonderful to go back and look at what I learned and make adjustments to lessons. With some of these things in mind, once the groups had made their Forms, rather than share via email etc (this just adds a complication) we clicked on the Live Form link at the foot of the page.
So everyone had on their laptop screens their form and I asked them to simply change places with those on their table and complete each others’ surveys. They then moved around the classroom adding their responses to other forms from other groups. Although it is nice to share via email, in my experience of working with Google Forms and lots of children it is much easier to move the children rather than share the Form. The children certainly got more responses this way and contributed more, there was less in the way.
After each child had submitted their responses they clicked on the Go Back to the form link which reset the form for the next child – this worked out really well. (15 minutes)
Up to this point the children were able to appreciate how Google Forms is a great way to gather information and how it organises it for us in the spreadsheet.
Back at their own Google Form the children spent some time exploring the results Summary page to look at how their data can be represented. (5 minutes)
As a class we returned to our Edu Favourites survey of educators in my Twitter network. By the end of my second session we had over 125 responses and it was a great pool of data to explore. Real data from real people that we literally witnessed being entered. I was able to ask children lots of questions from how it was represented. It proved to be a great plenary. Here are the results from the survey, there are currently 170 responses – thankyou if you were one of them. (5 minutes)
As a final exploration of this whole process you could explore the link data. I used bit.ly to shorten the long Google Form URL. bit.ly provides traffic data, with a free account, and you can show the class where the people clicking on the form are from. Currently there have been 269 clicks on the Edu Favourites form link and here is where everyone is from.
You could even do some work on how many didn’t fill in the form and compare it to those who did.
Thankyou for taking the time to help with our maths lesson today, I am always so grateful for your contributions – and some of you have even gone away wondering what Marmite is – life will never be the same again. By the way I hate it too!
The Curriculum Catalyst – Stage 1 – Add your ideas and votes
192 years ago
It is clear from our collective efforts as an education community we can create some excellent resources. The “Interesting Ways” series has illustrated how single contributions to a collective can be extremely useful. This has been underlined by the “Maths Maps” too.
The “Interesting Ways” series has focused on single tools and how these can be implemented in different ways in the classroom. I think we can do the same for curriculum ideas around a single topic.
It is one thing seeing individual ideas in the above presentations or in blog posts from teachers who share them, but these are often less accessible to the majority of teachers than we think. They are either too tool-specific or in the case of reading ideas in blog posts they can be difficult to apply to the general classroom.
The Curriculum Catalyst is about crowd-sourcing topic ideas – creating a resource that can be printed off, yes printed, to form the basis for more detailed planning. With the English primary curriculum in a period of flux we are in a great position to push the creative agenda more and more – online networks allow us the opportunity to collaborate on a simple resource to support this.
Stage 1 of this is about gathering topic ideas. Of course these can be ones that already exist that you have in fact already delivered. Perhaps it is a book or film, a subject topic or historical figure. They should not be fixed to an age group so the process is broadly applicable to as many classrooms as possible.
To contribute your ideas we will use Google Moderator which allows for a community to contribute and then vote on different items. Please have a look at The Curriculum Catalyst series over the next few weeks and “submit an idea” or vote for the ideas already contributed.
After a period of voting we will then take the top topic, Stage 2 will be about adding your ideas to support or engage learners within that topic. I don’t have any set ideas for which tool to use for Stage 2 and so would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. Ideally anyone should be able to see the document and print off a copy in it’s present form.
I hope you can help with the first stage of this new project by contributing your ideas and votes. Crowd-sourcing education resources has become a genuinely valuable process. Our collective efforts should be able to generate some great curriculum ideas.
#TBlesson Using Twitter to Explore the Language of Probability
102 years ago
Two years ago I had the idea of using replies from my Twitter network to gather responses about the probability of snow. What was planned as a plenary to a session ended up being expanded into a full hour long lesson. This week I taught the same maths topic and this post outlines the approach I took this year to my lesson.
Context
![P260210_15.49[03]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4389979401_89532f5496_b.jpg)
This was the second lesson in the week – the first was a basic introduction to some of terminology in basic probability of events. We talked about the ways we would describe events such as a deer jumping through the window or a cat wandering into the classroom. We then looked at a load of different statements and positioned them on the scale: IMPOSSIBLE – UNLIKELY- POSSIBLE – PROBABLE – CERTAIN. The Twitter lesson would extend this understanding of the language used by exploring the tweets from my network.
Set-up
One of the things I have written about before is the planned tweets that should take place before a lesson if you want to do this type of lesson. You can elicit responses on the spot, live, but you have much more control over how you use the responses if you allow yourself some time to do so. I tweeted this the day before and encouraged as many responses as I could:
With a good handle on the sort of responses I was getting I could plan to make the tweets into any sort of resource I wanted. Another reason to tweet early is to encourage members of your network in other countries to participate. This was crucial to the probability question I was posing.
As the lesson was beginning I repeated my request which bolstered the responses that were coming in live, indeed it gave some people the chance to adjust their snow estimates from the previous day.
Hashtag
At the end of the tweet you can see that I have asked people to respond using the hashtag #TBlesson. In terms of organisation this allowed me to easily copy and paste from a Twitter search page into a Google Doc. If you leave it to your replies you will have to edit out all of the odds and ends that are not relevant to your lesson which is time consuming.
Resources
- I decided that this time I wanted the tweets to be something the children could hold. I turned the digital into analogue and printed the tweets off. They were laminated and cut into individual cards. We made 3 sets for the different activities in the lesson.
- For the location activity we had 2 floor maps of the UK and Europe. I also had a SMART Notebook file from previous years that had tweets and a world map to work with.
- Finally I cleared some of the tables away and used masking tape to make a great big probability scale on the floor. I printed off some labels using the language from the previous day and placed them accordingly.
- 5 or 6 laptops for the location activity.
- The children’s maths books and pencil crayons.
Introduction
Using the #TBlesson hashtag I displayed a Visible Tweets presentation as the children were coming in from playtime. They were soon enthralled as the responses span and twisted their way onto the IWB display. I listened as the children began pointing out something to a friend or spotting a particular country.
I began by talking about my network on Twitter and how I had used it to find out about the chances of snow across the world. We spent some time watching the random display of tweets from the search and we talked about the language we discussed in the previous day and if we could see any examples of people using it.
I think Visible Tweets is an excellent way to display Twitter replies and I would highly recommend it if you are doing the same. This is another reason to use a hashtag when gathering responses as it is much easier and more controlled if you are displaying a specific search term.
In the image you can see a Tweetdeck column – this is another useful tip. I deleted all of the other Twitter columns and I was left with the #TBlesson hashtag search I had running. A simple and easy way to focus your classroom display on just what you need to show.
Listen to me introducing the session to my class. “Twitter Lesson Audio“
Activities
The children were put into mixed ability pairs and we had 5 pairs on each of the three carousel stations. After a 10 minute introduction I rotated these groups every 15 minutes which would allow some time for a short conclusion too.
Location
I wanted the children to begin to explore the location of the responses and to think about the climate of different parts of the world. The children had two floor maps of the UK and Europe to place a set of the tweet cards on (I filtered the cards appropriately). There was also the IWB which had a world map and a bunch of tweets from previous years.
I put out half a dozen laptops for the children to use to help them locate some of the places mentioned in the tweets. All of the children decided to use Google Earth to help them find the places and they then placed the cards on the floor maps.
The children had the option to use the technology to support them if they wanted and were confident enough to know the correct tool to help them. This is a good example of children independently choosing a technology to support their learning.
Probability Scale
There were many fascinating mathematical discussions in this group about the best place to put the different cards on the large scale. The children were having to interpret the plethora of terminology in the tweets and match them to the commonly used language on the scale.
This was a good challenge and the children worked in pairs to support each other in positioning the different statements. All three groups put the statements neatly above and below each other along the scale, even though many were the same. I extended their thinking by inviting them to place them alongside each other if they were equivalent.
A further step was to get pairs to check a small section for accuracy and to look closely at the ordering. I was able to direct different pairs or individuals to review the position of specific tweets that I knew would challenge them appropriately. (For example someone used 0.05)
Language Examples
![P260210_15.43[02]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4057/4390748466_32d73fcc7d_b.jpg)
In the third activity the children simply gathered examples of the language used, writing these out in their books. This would eventually lead us to a major conclusion we made as a class in the plenary.
This fairly straight forward task meant the children were really engaging with the variety of terms used and their records helped them to see the breadth of it.
They recorded fractions, decimals and percentages as well as slang and local phrases used for likelihood.
Reviewing the lesson and the language used
As a whole group we finished the lesson by discussing the different language that we had encountered during the session and shared some of the ways people were using it. We briefly explored the climate differences between locations and heard some examples of places that had an impossible chance of snow.
We concluded that the majority of people used percentages rather than words to describe the likelihood of an event. This lead us to think about the important mathematical link between a number and a word and how even though words are easier to understand they are less precise than giving a numeric value.
The children enjoyed the lesson and the carousel style of activities. After another quick tweet to my network we were able to enjoy some #snowpics to show it really was 100% certain some people were going to get snow!
Lesson Outcomes
The range of activities and the chance to explore the nuances of probability language gave the children a great opportunity to:
- consolidate what they had learned about basic probability language
- experience the full range and variety of terminology used
- begin to understand the link between a lexical and numeric representation of probability
Since my lesson on Tuesday I have already seen two other examples of teachers looking for responses from their Twitter network for specific lessons. Even 2 years on from when I first did this lesson I still think that the opportunity to use your Twitter network to provide insight, responses, input, challenge and data is overlooked by many. What makes it so manageable for us to contribute is that only 140 characters is needed.
A big thankyou to everyone who helped by making a contribution it is really appreciated. Hopefully this post shows you how your 140 characters fit into the bigger picture.
Why not have a look at what you are teaching in the next few weeks and consider making a request for your network to make a contribution. I hope this lesson has given you some ideas and real methods for how this can work and making the most of it in the classroom.
Are We The Resource I Have Been Looking For?
82 years ago
After some feedback and comments from Ben Barton and Sarah Brownsword on my previous post, I have begun to see another side to the third idea I outlined. The web application I proposed would provide teachers the opportunity to find resources, connections and ideas all in one place – from one search query.
Vortex by phill.d
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
However it occurred to me that although there are existing tools that perhaps do these things, they are just diluting the process. Another web application doing this will just multiply this further, resources and people will be in another place to join and search – spreading the network even more thinly.
Maybe I was coming at this from the wrong angle. The emphasis should be on teachers developing network capabilities that allow them to tap into and find all of this and not a tool or system that does it all for you.
I consider the journey to where my network is now to be just as important as anything I gain from it. The experience of virtually meeting and connecting with literally thousands of educators from around the world has been amazing – shortcutting to a prefabricated, ready-made, network denies people that opportunity.
Someone mentioned that this type of web tool (content management and social networking combined) is a sort of “holy grail” – but on reflection I think that the real treasure is a network that invariably yields value for the user in construction as well as in use.
I am just jealous of all of those trainee teachers who are establishing their networks whilst they are training. They are tapping into the insights from working teachers and no doubt benefitting from it in their own practice. Just imagine what their network capabilities will be like when they are 3 years or 5 years into teaching.
Every teacher training course in the world should encourage and teach students to build a network to support them professionally.
I am convinced. It is not a case of finding a single tool, system or platform that seeks out content and connects teachers – it should be down to us to make the journey to those different destinations ourselves and learn as much as we can along the way.
Twitter – A Teaching and Learning Tool
974 years ago
I think I have found the perfect place to reflect on the way a network, and specifically how Twitter, can impact on what goes on in the classroom. No mains gas, no telephones, no mobile signal, no internet connection, no possible way to interact with my personal learning network (PLN). Tucked away in the Cornish countryside the location of the cottage we are staying in provokes vocabulary such as: isolated, severed, detached and remote. But similar rhetoric could also be applied to the lack of connection I have with my network. I am removed from the network I want to reflect upon and away from the classroom that it can impact. This perspective is welcome as it offers me clarity of thought, as I write, that I have not had for a long time. In this post I hope to unpick what my Twitter network means to me in terms of my classroom practise and explore the best ways that you can utilise it in your own classroom.
Twitter: a communication tool
In my experience, and in the short time that I have used it, Twitter has grown quickly to play a major part in the way that I interact with fellow colleagues and professionals from around the world. In my classroom and with the children I teach it has been an exciting tool to utilise and support learning. However it is one of many tools that we have at our disposal. I do not see it replacing any of the others we use nor do I see the positive impact upon learning being exclusive to Twitter.
This diagram is a simplistic representation of my network in terms of numbers. It does not reflect that many individuals in your network will be linking up with you using different tools. For example, someone may be your contact on Skype, Twitter and perhaps subscribes to your blog. This would not be uncommon as each tool plays a different role for you and your network. However what we can conclude from the numbers is that I have been able to connect with a large number of people using Twitter. It forms a large part of my current PLN, but has been the tool I have come to last of all. This should be encouraging for most teachers looking to use Twitter, as with careful consideration and some small effort your Twitter network can expand quickly.
Unique communication
Twitter is primarily a communication tool and has often been described as filling the gap between email and instant messaging (IM). It is interesting that it occupies this middle ground. I believe it is important to understand how this communication functions in order to make the most of it in your classroom. IM is all about synchronous communication, relying upon people being online at the same moment. Asynchronous communication characterised by email (and blog commenting) is slightly more time consuming but does not rely upon people being online at the same time.
Twitter communication can be in both of these two different camps. It is a platform that can fluidly handle both synchronous and asynchronous messaging. However each exchange or interaction you have with your network can be more or less synchronous; no two will be the same. This is important because it allows a teacher the best of both forms of communication and the ability to utilise the power of them using just one application. So you could request information the night/day/week before and then return to those responses after some time. On the other hand you could activate your network to help on the spot, in that moment or current time frame when you need it. When you are planning to use Twitter as part of a lesson or to support learning the asynchronous facet of Twitter communication is perhaps the most useful. You can gather responses to a tweet over a short period of time and return to explore them with your class when you are ready. However you still have the opportunity to foster responses from your network in real time that can have an impact on learning. Here is a simple, theoretical timeline of a planned Twitter activity that can be easily adapted to suit your needs, and one that I know from experience works well.
The timeframe that A-D occurs in is flexible enough for it to work within hours or just minutes between. The repeat request (B) is optional depending on the sorts of responses you get from your initial interaction. If you are to take advantage of live feedback then it is a good idea to repeat your request (C) just prior to working with the children on the activity (D).
The information torrent/stream/river/brook/flood
My favourite metaphor for how we use Twitter is the idea that it is a river that is constantly flowing. And that when we open up the Twitter site in our browser or start up Twhirl we are at the banks looking on. Some of us stay on the banks, roll out our picnic rug or unfold that favourite chair and settle in to watch the information stream pass by. Others quietly observe from the banks for a short time but have their trunks on underneath their clothes, and were always going to jump in and contribute. However we choose to interact with this ever moving and changing flow of information, whenever we move away from the current we no longer see the flow – it passes us by, it carries on downstream. We can still hear the ripples and froths of the information eddying and ebbing along (or is that Twhirl alerts) but we no longer see it or interact with it directly. Understanding this distinct current is vital to make the most of Twitter in the classroom. I could ask for some contribution to a lesson, but those people momentarily away from the riverbanks could easily miss this request. My network may well return but the request will already be bobbing downstream out of sight.
I hope that you do not mind me indulging so deeply in such a metaphor – it helps me to appreciate the nuances of the tool.
Depending on how many people you follow will depend on how quickly the information flows. If you have only a small network of people that you follow then the brook will flow more slowly, those people are more likely to pick up upon your information request. Those following a large group of people will experience a much faster flow of Twitter updates and so when you throw your own into the torrent it can very quickly be washed downstream and out of sight. Armed with this knowledge I have begun retweeting requests so as to give people the opportunity to respond if they can. From the timeline diagram above you can see I have included just such a repeated request. This is particularly important if you are looking for a good number of responses to work with or if you send out a Tweet days before the event.
Manageable networks
Every user of Twitter has a different take on what sort of size your network should be to be manageable. In my opinion I do not think much of it matters. I currently follow over 500 people, I receive their updates, and I hear what is going on in their world. However they do not all tell me at the same time! I do not see this number being particularly difficult to manage, what is there to manage? I visit the information flow when I want and take what I wish from it. I know that when I am not engaged with it the river continues to flow. That does not bother me, I know that my PLN is wider than Twitter and anything important I need to know about will reach me through another tributary. I also appreciate some factors that will allow my network’s information to remain valuable even when it is greater than 500.
- How many people actually update every 5 minutes? According to my Twitter Karma only 236 contacts have updated in the last 24 hours. That is less than 50 percent.
- The global aspect means there will always be people asleep and inactive when I am engaged with Twitter.
- I know the times when my network updates the most.
- I also appreciate who updates most frequently.
- In my opinion the greater number of people I follow the richer the tapestry.
A global network
As any network grows it soon begins to encompass professionals from different parts of the world and this can dictate the levels of asynchronous and synchronous communication that goes on. When you plan to use Twitter in the classroom it is important to be aware of the time differences for different parts of your network. For example when I asked for some responses for a maths lesson at 9.30am GMT, Australian responses dominated the replies. I knew this was going to occur so I repeated the request later in the morning and at 1.00pm to take into account those waking up to the west. With this planned repeat of the request, members of my network in the US, Canada and South America were able to respond and contribute their small part to our lesson.
Who is in your network?
Although the numbers in the PLN diagram above are clearly dominated by those in my Twitter network I am more than aware that it is more to do with the “who” than the “how many”. In a previous post I explored a metaphor for interacting with your Twitter network. I wrote that asking if there was a doctor on board a plane would be much better if doing so on a large passenger jet, you surely have a greater chance of getting a response. When I wrote that, I was reminded of a story of a gentleman who, suffering from a severe heart attack aboard a small domestic flight, was saved by a whole team of cardiac surgeons, doctors and registrars who were all travelling to a conference on the same flight! I could not verify whether this was true or not and clearly there is a healthy slice of luck involved – but it does extend the metaphor in an important direction. A carefully constructed network of valued colleagues, all with a an ethos of sharing at the heart of what they do, may well be more valuable to you then a random mixture of hundreds of people. From my experience the vast majority of education professionals using Twitter have a fairly tight control over who they follow, I am no different. It is often when I receive an email notification of someone adding me to their network that I will think about these simple steps.
1) Explore their Twitter profile, scan who they follow.
2) Look for the language of education in the profile – teacher, tech coordinator, K12 etc
3) Explore their online work, blog, wiki or school website link.
4) Skim read recent Twitter updates.
5) If they are clearly involved in education I will follow back.
The very fact that someone has chosen to add me to their network is strong incentive for me to “follow” them back. I firmly believe in that approach to using this tool. I consider it to be a compliment every time someone clicks the “follow” button for similar reasons as I would. I try to thank people for adding me to their network with a direct message and I am always hopeful that in this new exchange there is a new possibility for learning for both parties.
Talking and listening
You have no control over the choices other people make in terms of adding you to their network. Just because you have added them does not mean it will be reciprocated. It is important to appreciate that Twitter in fact has two networks working alongside each other. To help better understand this below I have republished some graphics that I have used in the past to help explain this dichotomy.
Building your network
I do not profess to have all of the answers in terms of building a network using Twitter but below I have included some simple steps that I hope will support you in building your own. I have deliberately chosen to use the word “building” as I believe that you have to take some specific steps in order to lay the foundations for a successfully and appropriately populated Twitter network.
- Make it your own: the P in PLN is for personal, so take steps to follow people that interest you both professionally and personally if you so wish. There is no right way to do it. Consider how you want to use Twitter. In the classroom?
- Hit the ground running: if you are new to Twitter then explore other people’s networks and follow a bunch of people you would like to listen to, it will get the ball rolling.
- Go global: use Twitter mashups to explore possible colleagues in other countries – you will soon begin to appreciate a better sense of network geography.
- Friend of a friend of a friend: again use network visualising tools, like Twitter Blocks, to help you explore who is following members of your network. Take a couple of further steps and you may see many more possible connections.
- Your own rules: it is a good idea to establish what you will do when someone follows you, how will you check them out? Do they have to be a teacher? On what grounds will you decide not to follow someone?
- Reciprocate: try to follow back fellow education professionals when they add you. Your network widens and so does theirs.
- Balanced or unbalanced, does it really matter?: It is your choice how many people you follow and there is no Twitter police frowning upon us. If you want to follow 1000 teachers then go ahead!
- Participate: when it is right for you jump into the stream and get involved, there is no better way to characterise your profile then making contributions. When you want responses from your network, for your own lessons, your own participation may help to yield a reciprocated involvement.
- Respond: When other professionals ask for help/information or interaction via Twitter (and it is relevant to you) respond. Simple acts of 140 characters or less maintain a sharing ethos amongst your network. Others are ostensibly more likely to respond to your own requests later on.
- Search: Use Tweetscan to find out about discussions on Twitter. Search for keywords that are relevant to you – so a SMARTBoard or IWB scan may uncover a new network contact.
- Momentum: The behaviour of my network has changed since I began using Twitter. Momentum has been built in the numbers of followers I have and I would say that at around 400-450 followers I began to receive followers daily. That is network momentum.
Different types of questions to ask your Twitter network
When you plan to involve your network in teaching and learning in your classroom it is basically inviting individuals to offer their voice to what you do. Twitter is all about communication, so when thinking of what you will get from Twitter for your lessons – conversation is the currency. Below I have outlined some general categories for types of questions or requests you can make to your network, plus some examples for each. Anytime I would ask my Twitter PLN to be involved with the class with their responses I would always precede my response with, “I am working with my class…” or something similar indicating to all that it is directly for teaching and/or learning. I think that this helps persuade fellow professionals to contribute.
Creative
Involve your network in the creation of something new – perhaps in decisions during shared writing with a class, or a piece of music.
- We have written this so far…what word would you use to describe the event/character/scene/action?
- Can you help us to think of synonyms for “help”?
- Here is what we have written so far (insert URL) Should the character in our story be A or B – and tell us why you made that decision.
Data
A Twitter PLN provides a large group of teachers available to contribute all manner of data to a historical or mathematical investigation. Twitter would allow you to collect data easily but only superficially, but if you were to direct readers to an online form or poll then the data could be more in depth.
- What is the temperature where you are today?
- How far do you have to travel to work?
- How old is your school? What year was it built?
Opinion
This type of question could be incorporated into many different types of curriculum areas. What you are looking for here is the addition of another facet to the class debate and Twitter gives you that very easily, you can extend your discussions via feedback and insight from others. I would always recommend an age stamp clearly on these sorts of posts to signal what level of discussion, feedback or opinion would be most appropriate. (Twitpic is an excellent resource to share and discuss images using Twitter)
- Here is an image of Queen Elizabeth I what does it tell you about her?
- Here is what we have written so far (insert URL) Which of these sentences continues the report in the most persuasive manner?
- We have written some class rules what do you think of them so far?
Information
Instead of gathering data from all of your contacts, with these types of questions particular information could be teased from your network. These could ideally be used to help provide a global perspective about school life for children. Further steps in the conversation could be taken to find out more about a particular school etc.
- What is it like to work in an international school?
- Does the weather effect you at school? What do the children/staff do to tackle the high temperatures during the day?
- Most of the children in our class walk to school because so many live nearby, what is the most popular form of transport in your class and why?
Location
This is pretty simple – a request to find out where people are. I have used this to inspire a Google Earth introduction. Lots of potential for finding out about different locations and having a teacher there to guide you a little. Imagine having a teacher for your class to talk to in every city in the world?!
- We are exploring world time differences, it is nearly lunchtime for us what are you doing and what time is it?
- What is the weather like where you are?
- We are looking at the differences between the UK and Australia, is there anyone who can help us?
Challenge
Ask your network to pose challenges and questions for your class. Again this type of response could be planned for and incorporated into many different lessons.
- Challenge my class to find you using Google Earth, please provide us with just a small amount of information where you are?
- My class is revising the human body. Please give us a challenging question to answer. Grade 5.
- Challenge us to find a landmark or building that has a distinct shape?
There are many, many types of questions and requests you could make to your network but I think it is important that for every one you make there is a clear thankyou to those who have taken the time to contribute. After the lesson make a point of sitting down and tweeting to all of the individuals who helped. Another little tip that became very clear from the comments to a recent post is about the follow up. Where possible a blog post explaining how Twitter was used helps those who contributed get the bigger picture. Their 140 character contribution may have been a small piece of a larger tapestry – and it is useful to help other teachers realise that.
Reliable response
One of the most important questions when planning for a Twitter activity is: will I be able to get a response from my network? This is valid. You have to feel completely comfortable with the network you have built and the reliability of response you will receive. This reliability is very important if you are to plan for using Twitter as a teaching and learning tool, after all you do not want 0 responses. How can you get guaranteed responses? I think that this is impossible as you have no influence over the people that follow your updates. However there are two aspects that, in my opinion, can increase the reliability of response. Firstly it is important to build a network as described above. If you have network members that are more willing to share and contribute then a response may be more favourable. Secondly the sheer number of followers will statistically increase your chances of getting a response from the network.
The latter point is worth considering as you plan to incorporate Twitter in your lessons. If you have only just started out with the tool, then waiting for the number of followers to grow to reach a sort of “tipping point” is crucial. I explore the idea of a “tipping point” in this post. Only you can decide when this is, for me it was around 80-100 people and was proven in light of a particular interaction that went well.
Summary
In my opinion there is great potential in the use of Twitter to support teaching and learning. It is unique in this role because it is all about conversation on a larger scale. Not just instant messaging with one or two contacts or including a Skype call in your lesson, but speaking to a wider network of fellow professionals. Currently most users consider Twitter to be just a networking tool, this opinion was confirmed when I recently asked if it could be a teaching and learning tool. To make the transition into the classroom and having a direct influence on learning will take more people planning to use it and a growing weight of examples and successes to explore.
I look forward to seeing the different ways that I can use Twitter as a teaching and learning tool in the future with my class and I hope you will do to. Unfortunately the peace of the Cornish countryside is miles away as I finish this post. I have returned to the ever-connected world we work in and I can’t help but feel a mixture of reactions about that. Anyway I had better get Twhirl fired up and visit that river…
