While studying my B.Ed, I remember my teachers always saying 'Do not re-invent the wheel'. When I started teaching, to avoid re-inventing the wheel, I would search online for what I was looking for. Unfortunately, I found that sometimes it could take a long time to find exactly what I was looking for (or I didn't find anything and ended up having to create something from scratch). This can become frustrating, if it happens often, since our time is so precious.
Over the years, as I have gained more experience teaching and I have learned that the Internet does have a lot of great resources but so do other teachers. So my conclusion is this, to avoid re-inventing the wheel we don't just rely on Internet searches, but we create and establish our PLN that should include (at least this is what I believe) connections made on Twitter. I strongly believe this because I have found this tool one of the quickest ways in finding an answer or resource.
Here is an image to help display how Twitter works for Educators:
| http://blog.lifeisbalance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/pay-it-forward.jpg |
You can either ask your question (using Hashtags to target a certain group), or direct your question to a few people in your PLN. You can even do both at the same time to increase your audience, however remember you only have 140 characters, so use them wisely. After you have Twitted, you wait :) Hopefully you will have a response fairly quickly. If you don't get a response, follow up with those you contacted and you can even re-post your Tweet by re-wording it. The magic of Twitter comes into play when people start to Re-Tweet your question and you get a fairly prompt response!
I have to admit, this may not happen overnight, but the more your become familiar with Twitter and the more your build you PL, the more the magic will happen.
For more tips on learning how to use Twitter as an educator, check out : http://twitterforteachers.wetpaint.com/
For a list of chats to get involved in on Twitter visit:
http://www.cybraryman.com/chats.html
Let the magic begin!
PS. To learn more about creating your PLN visit:
http://onceateacher.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/pln-your-personal-learning-network-made-easy/
