Twitter for Professional Development

Week 3

For this Module, I had to follow five new-to-me educational hashtags. I looked through some of the more popular ones, but decided to go with the hashtags that meant the most to me and what I am currently teaching. The hashtags that have been added to my Tweetdeck are: #kidlit, #ELTchat, #elemchat, #spedchat, and #gbl.

In just a few minutes of scanning #ELTchat, the phrase WORD DOMINOES stuck out like a beacon. There is a link for a resource of how to make your own word dominoes for students to use in class. These are awesome! You can choose question words, like the example gives, or adapt to spelling words, story words, or vocabulary words. There are so many ways I can adapt this into my centers in my classroom.

Looking through #kidlit, I'm finding that there are so many resources on book lists for kids or up and coming authors. This one book list gives students a whole bunch of books to read about summer vacation, while they are on summer vacation. I wish I had this list in hand before we let out for summer break. I could have given the link to students so they can find high interest books for the break. I'll be able to use this hashtag during the school year to dig up some current books to introduce into my classroom.

Although I'm not currently teaching Special Education, I will always see through the sped lenses. #spedchat is filled with current articles about all the newest research and trending topics in Special Education. One that caught my eye directly relates to some of the struggles I saw students experience in my classroom this past year. I would have referenced this article about the signs of Dyslexia in struggling readers.

As far as using Twitter as Professional Development is concerned, I feel like it could be used as a good resource, but needs to be monitored. I know in completing this assignment, I took frequent breaks to check in on my favorite celebrities and the juicy gossip. There would have to be some way to hold people accountable to their own personal, professional development. If you are someone who just wants to learn new things to further your education without having to attend class, Twitter is an awesome way to develop professionally. I surfed Twitter for about ten minutes without interruption and wrote down nearly seven different resources that I would like to bring into my classroom. Twitter can be beneficial to someone who wants to grow professionally.