In last Friday’s Times Educational Supplement an article I had written was published about the use of social networking in schools. It seems to me that we are getting to a point where children in schools are experiencing a hidden social curriculum that we are no longer part of, this is especially the case for their use of social networking. In my own words:
Social networking should be taught more widely and in more depth in schools. No longer are we able to stick our heads in the sand about these communication tools. Nor should educators distance themselves from using them.
The paragraphs that were missing from the piece went as follows:
This is not simply about how much time students spend learning about social networking in GCSE ICT. This is an issue for every subject and teacher, a system wide issue, a social issue that needs the whole school to act, and it won’t just take the one or two teachers who use Twitter or write a blog to do it.
Those of us who are willing should take steps to develop a more supportive and positive ethos around the role of social networking in learning, school and society. Those who are unwilling need to get out of the way, because where we continue to remain idle we further disadvantage our students.
When you join Twitter it can seem a strange little place, with its own rules and secret ways. Having helped many people make a start I wanted to share some of the key things to help you early on so you can tap into the huge potential a Twitter network has. Here are my 10 steps:
1) Profile
This is about setting out your stall and saying to the world what you are about. Personally, I look for involvement with education in some form or reference to other stuff I am interested in.
Make sure that your profile, including a picture, is well updated as it helps others who might be looking to connect with you decide to follow you or not. Add a link to your blog, if you have one, so we can read a little more about you.
2) Jump IN!
Profile sorted, now just get started. Most people will look at your profile alongside what you have tweeted about recently. Write about how your lessons have gone, a great website you have used today (add the link, everyone loves looking at new web resources), a good digital camera you have in school, problems with your network, revelations from your pupils. Anything really, just make a start!
3) Follow people
For me Twitter is all about making connections with fellow, often like-minded, professionals, so find someone you know or whose blog you may have enjoyed reading for a while and explore who they follow and who follows them.
Then explore someone else’s follower list etc. When you look at someone’s Twitter profile you will be able to see the people they follow and those who follow them, with a few clicks your network will grow.
4) Piggyback
Give your network a kickstart by asking someone with a whole heap of followers to put in a good word for you. Piggybacking in this way will open up more networks for you to explore and teachers to follow. Just be sure to follow back those that have followed you if you are happy to.
5) Reply
Along with putting the word out about yourself, engage with people directly by replying (@ before their username) and direct messaging (D before their username – private). If you can help or offer advice of your own then do so where you can. You might be asking for help in the future.
6) Where else?
Remember that Twitter is just one part of a broad online network – make sure you spend time exploring other tools such as blogs (WordPress and Posterous) Google Plus, Plurk etc You will see that these social networks overlap, you will see different types of people and conversations taking place. All good.
7) Hashtags
These are little tags we use on Twitter to label different tweets. By adding a hashtag that update is added to a conversation that may be running in real time like #ukedchat or just a topic based tag that is more of a collection of tweets like #classblogs.
By using these labels our tweets will be seen by more people, even if our network is small. If I am interested in science and I search on Twitter for #science I will see all of the tweets labelled with that tag. I may or may not have those people in my network but I will see their updates.
Hashtags are a way to organise and filter conversations on Twitter and also a good way to discover interesting people to follow.
8) Blog links
Explore the blog links people share on their Twitter profiles and see what these people say about their work in more than 140 characters. Also, look out for Twitter badges and widgets on blogs you read regularly. They will normally appear in the sidebar saying “follow me” and will lead you to their Twitter account.
I think it is equally interesting to see how eloquent bloggers distil their thoughts to 140 characters as it is the other way around. If you have a blog you should think about adding links on your Twitter profile.
9) Worry Less
Once things are up and running and you have followed a whole bunch of people you may start to worry about what you are missing. Well, don’t! Many people have described reading Twitter updates like trying to drink from a fire hydrant!
Sometimes it can feel like that, you will no doubt adapt and adjust the ways you interact with Twitter as you continue to use it. I see it as a constant stream or flow of information+ideas which I interact with when I am there. When I turn away… c’est la vie.
10) Persevere
In the early days of Twitter use it can be very quiet, few replies, not much going on in terms of conversation. Do not be discouraged – try to persevere and stick it out and keep using it, soon enough there will be a “tipping point” when the connections you have make reap a bountiful information harvest.
Twitter is whatever you want it to be – it is a great place to start building a Personal Learning Network but not the only place. It is your personal choice how and if you use it.
Your profile is key as it sets your stall out clearly from the outset, especially if this is to be a professional network. I hope you have enjoyed exploring some of these ideas and they help you make a start!
Since leaving the classroom I have had the opportunity to read more widely then I have done at any point over the last 10 years. The work I am doing now takes me down paths including design thinking, business, social media and of course education. It is the variety of new domains of information and perspectives that I have found so engaging.
Not only have I been able to work with and immerse myself in ideas from outside of education but I have begun to see ways learning can benefit from them.
I have seen Twitter grow and grow into a huge global tool for educators. However those of us using it are still, for the most part, in the minority. However difficult it is to admit it, teachers using any digital tool to connect with fellow teachers are still in the minority. The prospect of a new social tool, such as Google+, was hugely exciting to see. It was great to start in a fresh space with the customary intuitive interface we have come to expect from Google products. So all rosy? Well not quite.
My main concern is a key difference between Twitter and Google+. When Twitter users connect with each other they basically ask themselves is this person interesting or in my line of work? Yes = follow. We all have our different methods but I suspect that covers most people. When I look at those people who have followed me on Twitter recently I can see very quickly (on a single page which I can just scroll up and down) what they do from their profile and just click follow if a) they interest me or b) they are in education. That’s it.
Importantly with Twitter there are no ways to target your messages to groups within those who follow you, it is an “all in” sort of method. My updates go to designers, teachers, classes, professors, executives, artists, whoever makes up your network. Do I think this adds value to the replies and perspectives you gain? Absolutely.
With Google+ Circles are we creating silos of information? By saying to users, “do you only want to share with those that find it 100% relevant?”, are we in fact encouraging a narrowing of perspectives? What about those that might find it 60% relevant? Or whose current project makes it highly relevant to them, but perhaps not at other times. Of course we have the choice to make things public in Google+ and the choice to have different circles, but Twitter’s default broadcast state is always set to public. An open style of sharing is not a choice.
Perhaps targeted sharing, in the style of a Google+ post, will just give me what I always get. The isolation of ideas, fuzzy-warm acceptance but nothing to challenge them. Alternate expertise has no way of peaking in or seeping into the reaction.
I think I will probably not use the Circles feature of Google+ because I think that I will be limiting the reactions I get and actively avoiding the opportunity to connect with other professionals who could add a valuable perspective beyond education. I still prefer a model that is more open by default and puts the responsibility of information filtering on the consumer, not the producer of the information.
Since March I have been running this little survey that is a limited comparison between the current preferences between Apple iPads in the classroom or Android Tablets. It obviously doesn’t take into account the other platforms that are on offer such as Windows machines.
There has been a fantastic response with over 1000 responses submitted and counting!
From conversation with colleagues on Twitter it seems that many people are heading towards Apple products due to the maturity of the App store and the sheer range of Apps that is available.
It would seem from these results that most educators are opting for the iPads over tablets running Android operating systems.
If you took a moment to vote I am really grateful – it would also beneficial to all who are interested in investing in iPads for you to leave a comment explaining your current thinking about the two types of devices. Explaining the thinking behind your decision process could really help others in the same situation.
I have been fortunate enough to see many resources created by the thousands of willing educators using Twitter. However in my opinion there is a strong case for using hashtagging more systematically, so that we better organise and structure the resources, ideas and thoughts we all have.
A Twitter hashtag uses this symbol # folllowed by a unique word, abbreviation, acronym or phrase that defines the subject or theme of the tweet it is included in. It is a great way to filter and organise tweets so they are easily found by your network.
Simply put, the more we use tagging the easier it will be to find the most relevant tweets that share resources and advice etc.
One example of a resource created using hashtags is the sentence starter tweets I began under the tags #sentstartdecisions and #sentstarttree. I wanted to gather together ideas for sentence starters that can be used in the classroom. Each tag is specific to a topic or theme that gives other teachers a little bit of a focus for their contributions.
They have proven really successful, with nearly 100 contributions for just these two tags – a great resource for the classroom, to inspire planning and to engage young writers. However the tweets are not that useful as they are – indeed there is also the retweets that use the hashtag, so it is mildly littered with less than useful tweets. I have taken all of the sentence starters and created separate Google Docs presentations with them, a sentence starter per slide. I suspect that in this form it is more useful and accessible to teachers and students.
(Please feel free to edit the above presentations and add your ideas)
In fact by using the Twitter hashtag I have in effect added a step in the process. The Interesting Ways series is so successful because when users contribute they archive and extend a version of the presentation itself – there is no middle man, well there is me and I often add ideas on behalf of people, but there is no middle step, you add your idea and that’s it. Using a hashtag and then having to generate a presentation from that tag before it’s Twitter lifespan runs out is time consuming. (Tweets will eventually not appear in a hashtag search)
On the other hand, adding a sentence starter idea via Twitter is less clicks for a teacher using Twitter – they don’t have to go to Google Docs, add the slide etc. So it is easier to do it there and then and add the hashtag. In fact some school children were contributing with their teachers this week.
I believe it is important we encourage the alacritous members of our network in some form of creation. Whichever way you gather the ideas engage them in creation as much as conversation.
