Twitter as your PLN

Image via CrunchBaseDo you Tweet?  I have to admit that I didn't think that I would have much use for it.  I joined Twitter in April and since then I have been pleasantly surprised to find how useful it can be.

Twitter is a social networking tool.  You can use it on your mobile device or on your computer.  Like Facebook, it allows you to connect to other Twitter users and communicate with them.  A Twitter message is called a "tweet" and is limited to 140 characters.  This may not seem like much, but what if some of those characters were an address to a web page?  That's why I joined.  I wanted to promote my website and announce when I had added material to it.  What I didn't expect was that it would turn into my very own personal learning network (PLN). 


The common misconception about Twitter is that it is full of short, random, meaningless comments.  To be sure, it has that; but when you join you are able to choose which Twitter users you want to follow.  You don't receive tweets from the entire Twitterverse, just the ones you want to follow.  I wasn't interested in what Lady GaGa had for lunch or any of that material.  The majority of accounts I'm following are educational technology related:  Edutopia, Classroom 2.0, Wired, Will Richardson, Daniel Pink, Steve Hardagon, Betchaboy, several that are Google related, and more.  For the most part, these people don't tweet the mundane parts of their day.  What I get from them are references to new material that I was unaware of.


Here's what I do.  A few times a day I'll take a minute or two and scan through the tweets I've received.  They only have 140 characters per tweet, so the messages are concise; this enables me to scan several dozen quickly.  When something catches my eye, I'll "Favorite" the tweet.  When I can, I go through my "Favorites" list on my computer because it's quicker than my phone.  

Here's a sample of what I've gotten in the past few weeks:

• I learned that Google Docs is now a mobile app for Android phones
• a video link from Steve Hardagon entitled "Why Students Don't Go To School"
• "20 Tips for Writing a Blog Post When You're Uninspired" from kikolani
• "Tips for Using Project-Based Learning to Teach Math Standards" from Edutopia
• From Will Richardson, a link to an article on how standardized testing is going to be used to evaluate NY teachers
• From jcalvert4, a website with 57,000 historic videos and 7 million photos; royalty-free and available for download for free.  Wow!

So how does that sound?  Why not try it for a week?  It's free and you can choose who you want to follow.  Twitter for me is a quick way to find material that enhances what I do.  What can it do for you?


Quick Twitter tip:  Use a URL shortening tool like TinyURL.com to shrink the length of web addresses in your tweets.  You only have 140 characters, so make them count.

Related articles

• A PLN Delivers Learning to Your Doorstep (usingdata.wordpress.com)
• Using Twitter and Other Social Media for Professional Development (shawnurban.wordpress.com)
• Exponential learning (cwilkeson.wordpress.com)
• Tearing Down Your Classroom Walls (freetech4teachers.com)