A Letter to My EDM 310 Students

Monday, April 6, 2009

To Learn Twitter You Must Practice Twitter - Some Suggestions

Still not up to speed on Twitter? Here are some suggestions:
1. Follow those who follow you. If, after 2 or 3 days they provide only jibberish or stuff that you are uninterested in (except things about education which you should keep even if you are not interested in it - you do not know everything about teaching yet. Just wait until you start teaching and you really know what I mean by that!, stop following them.
2. Follow your classmates, Mr. C (Wmchamberlain), Mrs Laura Walker (mrslwalker), and any others you find that are interesting.
3. Use the search function and search for topics such as educational technology.
Communicate with those who have interesting things to say. Say something about this course, or podcasts, or Twitter, or your blog assignments. Ask your followers to review your Professional blog. There are lots of areas in which others can help you!
4. Mr. C taught a course Monday April 6, 2009 for teachers at Noel Elementary School. His new twitters are bkeaton and ppolzer. Follow them. They are new to Twitter. Help each other out. Since they are teachers, they can help you out. Mary (michaelsgirl97) has already done this I now see. Great!). Share ideas with others by including #EDM310 in your tweet so that all EDM310 students (and maybe others) can easily find tweets related to this class.
5. See whether your contact for Project 6 uses Twitter. If so, follow them. If not, encourage them to use Twitter and to learn it along with you.
6. Search for #EDM310 periodically to see what other students in EDM310 are tweeting.

1 comment:

Wm Chamberlain said...

Dr. Strange, it is great to see how quickly you understood the usefulness of Twitter.

I would like to address this to the rest of your students:

It is okay if you don't see the value in twitter. It takes time to develop relationships from your network and to feel comfortable enough to share with them and have them share with you.

Obviously, many people feel twitter has value for their personal and professional lives. That doesn't mean that twitter will work that way for you.

I would suggest you give twitter some time and attention. Broaden who you follow and read what they write. Don't feel bad if you only "lurk" because everyone on twitter lurks sometimes. Then, if you still don't see the usefulness for it then don't use it. No tool is right for everyone.

If twitter doesn't work for you, I would encourage you to find other avenues to develop a network. The worst thing you can do is isolate yourself from the collective intelligence (and sometimes wisdom) of the rest of us.

Mr. C