Twitter for Professional Development and Education

When I hear "professional development courses/certificate programs" I immediately think of travel and accommodation costs. Professional development is very important to me as I don't want to lag behind while things are changing so fast! I want to know what is out there and what is happening, what the new trends are. I am always curious about other teachers' classrooms and what those teachers are doing differently, what works for them, what their opinions would be on my classroom struggles. I have recently found out that Twitter can be used for this purpose. We can still benefit greatly from those professional development courses and all, but Twitter is a gold mine for educators. Many educators today are using microblogging to talk about many different topics which we can all relate to, and they are sharing invaluable tips and amazing ideas. It is very easy to follow and you get a lot in an hour. I will recommend this to all my colleagues who are not aware of twitter chats.

You can also use twitter for educational purposes. In their article, How Twitter Can Be Used as a Powerful Educational Tool, Alan November and Brian Mull mention that Twitter can be used as part of the learning process by any classroom. One of the activities that he explained amazed me. A teacher from Texas posted a twit to her students along with a picture from a game and the picture was her holding a soda cup in her hand. She asked students to come up with questions based on the picture, and reactions from the students were amazing. They were very creative and came up with a lot of questions. What was amazing was that students stopped whatever they were doing and rushed to respond to their teacher. This is a great example of sharing learning opportunities with others outside of classroom




 Another way that we can use Twitter for students is we can have them collaborate on writing a short story. It is a fun activity where one person starts it and another continues. It can take a few days, weeks or even months to complete it, but it is a fun activity and very good for improving writing skills.

Twitter Chats

This week I joined two twitter chats: #ELTchat on Wednesday afternoon, and #langchat Saturday morning. This has been my favorite professional development platform so far! It is a treasure! I use twitter on a daily basis mostly to keep up with trending topics in my home country Turkey and in the world. I also use it as a news source quite often. But, little did I know that I would some day use twitter for professional development.  

To my surprise the topic in both chats were the things we have been studing in my linguistics and literacy classes over the past few weeks. ELTchat had people join from many different countries. They discussed pronunciation teaching, why teachers skip it, what are some good sources etc. It spoke to my heart! I am personally not confident teaching pronunciation mainly because of my accent. It was great to see that I was not the only one feeling this way. Topic in #langchat was collaboration with colleagues in other disciplines. Moderator posed discussion questions and people were so generous sharing their experiences, concerns, resources, ideas etc. At the end of the chat, moderator asked what people took away from the chat, which was a great summary of the conversations. I mostly observed both chats, but I learnt a lot in a very short time! I loved it for many reasons, but here are some:

1) It is a free professional development platform you can join in your PJs from your home.
2) Conversation topics are very well chosen and discussion questions are to the point.
3) You get to meet genuinely enthusiastic professionals from many different places and build a network.
4) You learn a lot in an hour! You learn a lot of practical tips. This week someone from NC said she has her elementary school students use voicethread to describe the self portrait they did in art class. Amazing idea to how how you can collaborate with colleagues from other disciplines!
5) They are so welcoming! They don't mind if you are just there to observe. 
I loved twitter chats so much that I will definitely be a regular.