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8 Ways to Support Your PLN with Twitter

Are you a giver? Most educators that I know are.  Here are eight ways, in no particular order, that you can support your personal learning network with Twitter.
  1. Post Reflections - Share your classroom successes, and failures. Tweet your thoughts on being a teacher, a leader, and a learner.  Use Twitter as a digital diary to support your PLN.
  2. Share helpful resources - Other educators will find value in the readings and resources that you find interesting and useful. Use Twitter for social bookmarking to support your PLN.
  3. Ask challenging questions, and share your answers - Google isn't the only place to find answers to our questions. The power of the Hashtag (#) is it's ability to find and filter. Use Twitter as a search engine to support your PLN.
  4. Communicate & connect in real time - Twitter chats provide an interesting avenue for sharing your experience, knowledge, and opinion. Use Twitter as a chat room to support your PLN.
  5. Follow contributors - Follow only those people that make frequent, meaningful contributions to your learning. PLN members will want to know who you are following. Keeping this list clean and current helps maintain the quality of the information being shared. Block the users that don't play nicely. Use Twitter as a high quality classroom to support your PLN.
  6. Highlight the best stuff - Re-Tweet (RT), and "Favorite" those Tweets that you find particularly interesting and helpful. Mention (MT) those people that deserve credit or recognition. Use Twitter as an announcement board to support your PLN.
  7. Organize and categorize the information - Create "Lists" to organize the people that you follow into manageable, related chunks. Use Twitter as a contact directory to support your PLN.
  8. Be yourself, share yourself in your voice - Create a Twitter profile that concisely and honestly let's people know who you are and why you are using social media. Use a profile picture that helps identify and distinguish you from other users. Use Twitter as a digital resume to support your PLN.
Are there other ways that educators can use Twitter to support their PLNs?  How can students use Twitter to enhance their learning?






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