Translate

mercoledì 29 agosto 2018

Professional Development: Hashtags and Twitter Chats

The fourth step of the course  about PLN is focussed on  Twitter. You can find the main information in the course online -https://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/pln-twitter-chats/. It is simple to follow educators and also to participate in chats online.


As I have said  many times  having an account on Twitter has helped me become a connected educator and now I follow educators and hashtags. I share ideas and when I find some news which might interest friends online  I share it.

 It is important to share ideas because sometimes educators do not find the time to search online and if you can rely on someone online , this is fine.
I have checked a lot of hashtags online and most of them provide lots of interesting connections and ideas to share in education. Ideally you can learn about almost anything and it is always free online.
Conferences, online conferences, prizes, news, free ebooks,...……………… here is my short video about some people I am following online who are used to  using hashtags: Sarah Thomas and Paula Naugle.
It is based on tonight's check and I am sure that I could have found more information , from links and also to  simple tips for people who feel  they are engaged.






In one blog post  Shelly Terrell suggested a list of specific  hashtags for my PLN : you can find it online

http://blog.esllibrary.com/2016/02/02/the-ultimate-hashtag-guide-for-english-language-teachers/

A good database has also been shared online by Kasey Bell:

https://shakeuplearning.com/blog/educational-hashtag-database/


This simple Padlet  describes how Twitter chats  have changed the way we work and connect with the others:

Creato con Padlet


Why should Teachers use Twitter chats and hashtags? 

I think that we can find many  reasons:

- you can share ideas and learn from the others
- you can meet  new people who are like-minded and might be interested in working online with you too
- you meet new teachers and people who you might never meet but you become friends forever
- some chats are really engaging and provide the best of information from sources to conferences online you would have never learnt about in the daily papers. I have often downloaded the best of education guides which had been shared by some educators.
- educators and students can connect and use hashtags for sharing what they have done and for projects

I feel that in the USA  Twitter is more popular than in Europe, I would say that we have more politicians that use  Twitter in my country to spread ideas and also influence  people during the main elections.

What I like of Twitter is the simple way and the tools you can use: it is also good for educators who want to share content and important messages with their students!!                                                          
It would be nice to have more teachers in my school who use Twitter chats!

Nessun commento:

Posta un commento