Mod 6, Post 2 - Using Twitter for Professional Development

"Professional Development" is a pretty big buzz word in the world of education. I have been hearing it since declaring an education major in my freshman year of undergrad and I have been continuing to hear it throughout my masters and throughout my first year working in a school. Teachers are called upon to constantly update their professional development by attending workshops, conferences, classes, etc. With all of the technology at our fingertips however, professional development can actually be done right from our phones.


Over the last year or so, I have started to come across educational twitter accounts run by teachers or by education outlets, if you will. I have always enjoyed following them and picking up helpful teaching hints here and there. During one of my student teaching placements I needed to teach a lesson on the difference between revolution and rotation and I actually came across a post on one of the teacher twitters that I followed at the time that gave me a great idea for my lesson!

I have been using Twitter for several years now and I have seen Twitter chats and looked through them, but I never actually participated. I read the article, What is a Twitter Chat?, and it gave me a bit of a deeper insight into what they are. I also read The Twitteraholics Ultimate Guide to help give me better insight into what I was reading in the Twitter Chats.

I think that following eduTwitters and looking through Twitter Chats can be very beneficial for me as a future teacher in terms of finding helpful hints and new strategies, etc. However, I don't necessarily see myself participating in Twitter Chats as a form of professional development - I just think they are nice to look at and browse through for my own personal type of professional development.

I know that some teachers use Twitter as a teaching resource with their kids, as well. I have always thought about when I finally have my own class that I will make a twitter account for the class so that we can post updates and pictures for the parents to follow, which I think would be a very neat idea. Considering that I plan to teach younger students however, I don't think my use of Twitter in the classroom will go much further beyond that.

The more technology you can use and the more outlets for professional development that you can take advantage only means a greater chance of growth for you as a teacher!

Video Reactions

Educational Change Challenge  

The Educational Change Challenge video was short, but made a lot of great points about staying up to date and relevant in teaching. "Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way" (George Evans) This quote at the beginning of the video was very thought provoking to me. As a teacher with a background in special education, I am very aware of the different learning styles and types of learners that teachers can encounter. However, thinking from an ESL standpoint, I am thinking about even great complexities and differences amongst ESL learners that I will encounter who bring with them even more unique learning styles from their own background and culture that may be very different from what I am used to. 

This quote also struck a chord with me - "In education, the use it or lose it rule may be that if you don't use technology for learning, you may lose relevance; an educator must be relevant. Teachers need to exist in the space the students exist, understand their culture, you have no credibility if you're not where they are. Because the generation of students that I am teaching is at instant putting the drive thru, microwave, downloaded from the internet, media driven generation, I know that I must be innovative to keep their interest and to inspire in them creative curiosity" (Martin). I have grown up with technology and have learned to use it pretty well, but I will admit that during my student teaching, I was having students help me with the SmartBoard technology as well as with some work on the iPad. I needed to include technology into my lessons because that was what the students knew. As a student in elementary school, my teachers used very little technology, so that was why it was hard for me at first to integrate it into my own teaching. However, as this video states, we as teachers must get on the same playing field as our students, and utilize the technology that they all have right at their fingertips. Not using technology in our lessons and daily teaching will simply make us irrelevant in the world's of our students. Not only with technology, but with all aspects of our teaching. We must find a way to get our students to buy into what we are teaching them; we must find ways to keep them engaged. I chose this image from Dead Poets Society because John Keating (Robin Williams) finds ways throughout the movie to connect with his students and keep them hanging on his every word. I find this moving inspiring to me as a future teacher, and it's also just a very great film!

Social Media Revolution 2011

The Social Media Revolution video was again a short clip, but it held a very powerful message. Social is so big, that our world is getting "smaller". We can communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world, in a matter of seconds. A teacher in America can FaceTime with students in China to teach a lesson. Entire college courses, just as this one, can be taught online, with out any physical interaction between professor and students. It is amazing what social media and technology can do, but it is also a bit scary how important it is becoming to society. 

As a teacher, it almost impossible to run a classroom with out being relevant on social media. Even if you're a kindergarten teacher, and your students don't use social media, their parents definitely do, and sometimes that is the only way parents can communicate with teachers. It is to the utmost advantage of us teachers to become comfortable with using social media as a tool in our classrooms, because it is not going anywhere anytime soon. The one quote from this video that I really liked was, "We don't have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it" (Erik Qualman). 

A girl that I student taught with was teaching third grade, and did a whole character study on a book the class read using Facebook as the inspiration behind the project - the students each had to choose a character from the book and create a Facebook page for their character, and then they each had to post on other characters' walls from the point of view of their character. It sounds complicated, but the third graders did an amazing job, because the material was presented to them on a platform that they were familiar and comfortable with - social media. 

As our world grows smaller and our students become more diverse, we as teachers can use technology and social media as a beneficial classroom resource that can help us and our students connect not only with each other, but with other resources around the world that can give them new insights, information, and strategies. 

The picture that I chose for this video is pretty self-explanatory. Most of the tools that were once used in a classroom, even something as simple as a pencil, are becoming obsolete. The majority of learning and teaching are beginning to come in the form of a screen that is attached to the rest of our world.