Twitter Sparks Teacher Camaraderie
article by Daniel Duerden | January 25, 2012
Over the last year there has been much debate over how teachers are to use social media with students. Many districts and schools are implementing policies and guidelines for teachers connecting with students. However, Twitter has become a hub for teachers to connect with other teachers. Teachers are using the website to help each other by providing helpful tips and advice.
New teachers are finding Twitter to be a useful tool as their first year of teaching can sometimes be overwhelming.
"Twitter essentially prepared me to go into my second year and not give up," Jamie Josephson, now in her third year at Woodrow Wilson High in Washington D.C. said to The Washington Post. "I never would have imagined that it would have been the place to find support."
Josephson found Twitter to be a place where she could find a wealth of information and support from other teachers who had gone through the same things she was experiencing as a first-time teacher. She is joined by a wealth of other teachers seeking the same camaraderie and support.
"After a really good chat, all you are is excited to go back to work and try something," said Greg Kulowiec, a teacher in Plymouth, Mass. said to The Washington Post. "It’s very motivating to see other people motivated."
This connection between teachers over Twitter began three years ago when three teachers—Shelly Terrell, Tom Whitby and Steven Anderson—sought to connect with other teachers. They created the hashtag #edchat and had roughly 100 teachers chatting with each other over Twitter every Tuesday night.
"I have had anywhere from 2 to 6 Twitter participants engaging in these conversations adding observations, advice, debates, anecdotes, and links," Terrell wrote in a blog post. "However, Tom Whitby brought to my attention that new people to Twitter and others may not be able to follow the discussions. Therefore, we created the hashtag #edchat for all educators to post their thought-provoking conversations throughout the day."
Today, over 2,000 teachers worldwide join the Tuesday night conversation exchanging ideas. And a second chat has been added in the afternoon to accommodate teachers overseas in areas like Europe and Australia.
These chats have also spawned other chats that are specific to other subjects like music (#musedchat), math (#mathchat), special education (#spedchat) and English (#engchat).
To join the conversation, just start posting your ideas and add the appropriate hashtag at the end of your message. There are also various tools you can use, like TweetDeck, to organize posts as well.
"I always tell people the the most valuable 15 minutes I spend, in terms of my professional growth, is when I jump on Twitter at night and see what’s going on," Kulowiec said to The Washington Post.
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