Recently, I gave a Keynote for educators new to developing a learning network through Twitter. Please share the following resources with those new to Twitter in order to encourage them to join our passionate educator community. This PRESTO presentation is an updated version of my previous one, How to Build A PLN Using Twitter.

In order to be cutting edge and stay relevant in any career field, we need a Personal Learning Network (PLN)! A PLN consists of individuals who we choose to take part in our professional development. These individuals share resources, exchange ideas with us, offer support, and collaborate with us. Twitter is one of the quickest ways to establish a PLN. However, many educators new to Twitter may not understand how the process works. In the beginning, I used to only update then I discovered how to engage with others in order to build a strong PLN.

Do you have 3 minutes, 20 seconds?

You probably do not have the time to read all the Twitter materials available, but do you have 3 minutes and 20 seconds? In the PRESTO below, I share with you how to connect with educators worldwide using Twitter. A PRESTO, PRESent your TOpic, is a video presentation style created by Heike Philp. The speaker creates a PowerPoint of 10 slides that auto-advance every 20 seconds.

More Resources

by Oliver Widder, Geek and Poke, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 License

Help other educators new to Twitter by sharing these resources through your presentations or workshops:

• My Twitter for Beginners Wiki filled with video tutorials and a 6 step guide to getting started on Twitter.
• My Keynote SlideShow: Connecting in a Globalized World Through Twitter.
• Youtube channel with video tutorials on using Tweetdeck, Delicious, RSS Readers, EchoFon, RSS Flash G, and more!
• EchoFon- Free Iphone app that acts as a browser for Twitter
• RSS Flash G- Tweet your favorite RSS feeds in seconds, share with others on Google reader, save in Delicious

Challenge:
Share these tools with educators in your school! I’m sure they have 3 minutes and 20 seconds!

You may want to subscribe to receive regular updates.

Part of the Goals 2010 Challenge Series, Goal 9

One of my long-term goals is to post more guest pieces on other websites or blogs. I love having my writings published on other websites. Writing a guest post improves your writing in numerous ways, because naturally many of us hold ourselves to higher standards when we are guests. The wonderful part is you do not even have to be a blogger in order to write guest posts. Some of the most prominent members of our Personal Learning Network (PLN) do not have blogs, but guest blog regularly. These include @nmhs_principal and @tomwhitby. Guest posts help you gain a positive web presence, help distinguish you as a subject matter expert (SME), help you gain exposure to a wider audience, and boost your portfolio.

Tips

Here are some useful tips, I learned from my experience:

• Have a short bio prepared- In your bio you may want to include your job position, related experience, a link to your portfolio or website, and a link to your Twitter or LinkedIn accounts.
• Have a nice profile picture prepared- Most people recommend having a picture of your likeness versus an avatar or logo.
• Write the best types of posts- Remember this will be your first impression on many new readers.
• Grammar check your posts!
• Ask the guest blogger for specific guidelines and keep to these guidelines- format, length, whether images are necessary, and what type of topics they are desired
• Reply to those who comment- at the end of all the comments you should be able to see a button that gives you the option to subscribe to comments so you are notified each time a person comments. Leaving comments is important for engaging readers in the discussion.
• Study the audience!

Where to Submit

Here are a few places that welcome posts from guest bloggers. Contact these websites through their contact pages or through Twitter. Introduce yourself, send them a bio, and your ideas for a guest piece.

• Guest series- contribute to a blog’s guest posts focused on a theme
  • Investigating Global Edtech Issues- I am looking for contributors from various countries, please check here to make sure I do not have a post from your area.
  • Cool Sites- I accept posts that lists favorite education technologies with examples of how you used them with your students.
  • What Did They Tweet?- Choose your favorite tweets of the week and provide pics, video, and descriptions.
  • Stories From the Front Lines of EFL-  Barbara Saka’s series on teaching young learners English.
  • 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons- Provide advice to new teachers
• Any ning site you are a part of has an area for blogging, but you can try these as well.
  • Second Life is Life ning- Are you a part of Second Life, we are always looking for posts.
  • Educator’s PLN ning
• Prestwick House, @PrestwickHouse
• The Educators’ Royal Treatment
• The Lesson Machine blogezine, @MyschaTheriault

To see some examples, you can visit the guest posts I have made.

If you are new to the 30 day Goal challenge then you may want to read this post with more details!

Challenge:

Choose a profile picture for your upcoming guest post. Write a short bio.

You may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

This is goal 9 of this series! If you’d like to join the challenge, please read this post!

Don’t forget to leave a comment that you accomplished this goal using the hashtag #30Goals!

What are you passionate about writing?

Guest post by Neal Chambers

Most technologies that are easily adapted and made widely popular are usually improvements of things that already exist. Mail replaced messanger services; the telegraph replaced mail; email replaced mail; Google Wave (might) replace email. It is the same with Twitter. Twitter replaced online chat which (kind of) replaced parties. There are some key differences that Twitter adds to the table though. For example,

A) You can join anyone’s party, and anyone can join your party. If you have your feed unprotected, and you do have your feed unprotected right?

B) You can throw anyone out of your party if you need to. You usually don’t but it’s always nice to have the one button option of doing so.

C) People from around the world can join your party.

D) The party is going on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

E) People are asynchronously enjoying your party. One conversation can last a day, weeks, or even months.

With all these changes in mind, it’s still important to understand that it’s a party and it’s your party. You should keep in mind to be successful you need to be a good host. Let’s go over the basics:

Send Out Invitations

photo: pareeerica

Every good party starts with inviting people over for a drink. This can start with listing yourself in the various Twitter directories out there on the Internet. I just recently published an article on the matter – 14 places to find good quality followers. There I have listed all the major directories and follower recommending websites. It should be a great place to jump start your following.

There are other options though. Something that I regularly do is look at my friend’s ‘following’ list. These are Twitter users that your friend has actually chosen to follow. This usually comes up with better results than the ‘followers’ list because they might be spammers. When looking at this ‘following’ list, be sure to click through to the user’s profile and read their bio, last few tweets and check out their blog if they have one. Then add a few people you like.

Greet your Guests

photo: RuTemple

Okay, now the party is starting. Guests are arriving at all times of the day and night because after all this party is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s important to try to acknowledge any newer followers. It might be good to greet them and ask them where they are from and make sure they don’t need a drink or something.

There is a current trend right now to do this with an automatic DM or auto-DM. These can be okay if A) it’s not overly generic (e.g. Thanks for the follow! Look forward to your Tweets!) or B) You offer free stuff or more information about yourself through a link.

Personally, what I TRY to do is look through a user’s profile and ask a semi-personalized question like – How is teaching in Detroit? or I love the layout of your Teaching blog. This way they know I’m not just sending them a generic auto-DM. It shows you are actually taking the time to get to know someone which is one principle behind having a PLN.

Introduce Everyone

photo: ItzaFineDay

You know those fancy parties where you show up and some guy in a fancy suit announces to the party that you’ve arrived? Don’t worry if you’ve never been invited to one, because now you can live out that experience on Twitter. When someone logs on to Twitter the first time, chances are they don’t know anyone at the party. They’ve come because they heard it’s where all the action is or where all the cool people are (that’s us right?).

So, it’s good to give them a proper welcome by introducing them to all of your following. Be sure to include a relevant snippet about them in the Tweet and their username. You can do this as soon as they get online or wait for #teachertuesday or #followfriday.

Help the Confused-Looking Guy/Gal in the Corner

photo: CarbonNYC

From time to time, people will need help. After all, that might be one reason why they came to the party in the first place. You can help these guests out by filtering your Twitter stream with a ‘?’. This will give you all the Tweets of people asking questions. Sometimes you will come up with a few rhetorical questions, but more often than not you’ll find a friend in need. This is what having and building a PLN is all about, spreading information and helping others solve problems.

You can also use a neat little service called twithive.com This web app allows you to filter your stream by questions, conversations, links or retweets. It also packs in a few more features like Tweet clouds, which are clouds of the most popular terms for your stream. I find it offers you a way to look at your Twitter stream from a different angle.

Pop your Head in When it Counts

photo: meddygarnet

Since the party is going on all the time, it’s literally impossible to be at the party at all times. Many have tried and all have failed. Don’t be a Twitter addict. You have to pop your head in every once in awhile and make sure every one is still enjoying themselves. The key to this is to know exactly when to do this. There are a couple metrics you can look at to see when your following is online.

1) Click counts – If you use a URL shortener (and you should) then you’ll be able to track your click counts. I really good service for this is j.mp (AKA bit.ly). Take note of when your links are being clicked on the most and what links are more popular.

2) Tweetstats.com – This site can give you some stats on when a particular user is online. It breaks down tweeting frequency by days of the week and even hours of the day. You might want to check the stats of people with a big following and see when they are online the most. However, the more tweets someone has made the longer it will take for tweetstats to compile the data.

Enjoy the Party

photo: Wendy Piersall

It’s important to remember that Twitter is just a tool and not a lifestyle. It’s okay to step away from time to time and take a break. It’s also okay to let your personality and opinions shine through and add to the melting pot. Don’t take it too seriously, it’s party after all.

If you are on Twitter be sure to join me @nealchambers. I’ll see you at the party! Also, if you haven’t already, please take the time to fill out a short survey, I promise it’s painless.

====================================

Neal Chambers has taught in Japan for just about 5 years despite graduating in video production. He is currently teaching at a private English conversation school in Osaka. He is a regular teacher contributor at EnglishSpark.com where he writes the series Teacher Stumpers about difficult and odd grammar. He enjoys attempting to climb mountains without injuring himself.

Last week of October edition!

Have you ever come across a tweet that you really wanted to discuss and share with others? Here are the ones that grabbed my attention this week. Check out the rest of this weekly series, What Did They Tweet?

Cool Claymation Tips

The educator in me loves student projects, which is why this is my favorite tweet of a claymation video by four students. The music is amazing, the story plot resembles Romeo and Juliet, and the creativity is off the charts. How could this tweet get any better? Maryna Badenhorst‘s tweet also provides a link to a list of claymation resources and tips to get your students started in creating their own claymation videos! I really enjoyed browsing through the rest of the website which offers very cool educational technology tips! I am sure this will become a favorite part of my daily read!

Good Tech/ Bad Tech Debate

In this brilliant post, Jamie Keddie explores the parallels in describing the relationship between technology and the classroom. He uses the medical field as an example and illustrates with images how two pediatricians use technology to save lives in Sierra Leone. Read this thought-provoking post!

Hip-hop and Shakespeare

I attend several webinars and in nearly every one of them run into my webinar buddy, Mary Beth Hertz. During one of the webinars I sought some advice in teaching English language learners Shakespeare. Mary Beth later tweeted me a link to this amazing article about the rapper, Akala, hosting workshops for teenagers that relate Shakespeare to hip-hop. These types of projects are incredible for closing the achievement gap. Watch the inspirational video below about the project.

Creative Use of Pocket Change

Ashley Allain shared this wonderful post about a very creative lesson using pocket change. Dan Meyer walks the reader through this math lesson in using a jar of change to motivate students to critical think. The post is illustrated with amazing infographics and explains the process in more detail.

Wiki Full of Tech Tools

Janet Bianchini tweeted this wiki full of various educational technology tools. In the wiki, you will find extensive tips and resources on:

• Blogging
• Podcasting
• Voicethread
• Videoconferencing
• Wikis
• Social Bookmarking and Annotating
• Information Management
• Microloans
• Research and Reading
• Hearing Voices
• Presentations

Add the people in this post to your PLN by using this mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!

marynabadenhors, cheimi10, mbteach, aaallain, janetbianchini, larryferlazzo, kalinagoenglish

On the mindmap, click on the earth icons to follow the links to the Twitter profiles, blogs or websites! You can also make this mindmap smaller or larger and move it around. If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• Monthly Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• The Blogosphere, the Twitterverse by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenge:

Add a new blog to your reader or bookmark one of these websites!

Which tweet really inspired you? Leave a comment below!

Have you ever come across a tweet that you really wanted to discuss and share with others? Here are the ones that grabbed my attention this week. I invite you to check out the rest of my favorite tweets in this weekly series, What Did They Tweet?.

Students Making an Impact

In my last post, I shared my desire to raise students who are passionate about making a difference. This video shared by Lika, who often tweets about activism, shows a powerful speech given by a teenager to the UN. The girl does not paint a pretty picture, but reveals her frustration at the continual destruction of the environment by adults. Share this video with your students and witness their reactions. I believe students will be inspired by the video.

Wiki Projects You Should Support

Inspire students to improve their writing and reflect upon it by leaving a comment on one of the several projects listed in the Comments4Kids wiki. This wiki was created by WMChamberlain. If you have a student project you would like people to leave comments on, then you can add your project to the wiki!

Have a presentation you are proud of and want to share it with your PLN? Add your presentation under the several categories listed in Beth Still‘s presentation wiki page. You are welcome to use any of the presentations on the wiki. This project has several presentation formats and would be great to share with students examples before they begin their own projects or to share with other teachers during a training session.

20 Ways to Use Comics in the Classroom

TNschatz shared this slideshare presentation, which demonstrates 20 wonderful ways to use comics for student learning. Comics are great to use in the classroom, because they are visual, fun, and accessible to English Language Learners! The presentation also includes various links to free comic creators.

New Features in TweetDeck

Do you wish you could see your new followers’ bios? Karenne Sylvester has been asking Twitter to bring back the bios. However, this time Matthias Heil came to the rescue by sharing a link to TweetDeck’s version 0.31′s new follower feature. This feature will show you a column of your new followers and show their bios so you can quickly follow, block, or report them to spam! Watch the video below that Matthias shared!

Add the people in this post to your PLN by using Russel Tarr’s mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!

808lika, wmchamberlain, bethstill, tnschatz, matthiasheil, larryferlazzo, kalinagoenglish

On the mindmap, click on the earth icons to follow the links to the Twitter profiles and websites! You can also make this mindmap smaller or larger and move it around. If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• September Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• The Blogosphere, the Twitterverse (ELT 08/09) by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenge:

Share one of the websites with a fellow teacher or join a wiki project!

Would you like to be a guest host on this series with your favorite tweets? Please contact me!

Have you ever come across a tweet that you really wanted to discuss and share with others? I experience this so often that I have created this weekly series to bookmark these tweets and start a discussion with you about them. I invite you to check out the rest of this weekly series, What Did They Tweet?, if this is your first time.

If the mindmap is not coming out in the RSS reader, you can click on the image to go to the original mindmap.

The Fun Theory

Can we change students’ behaviors by making learning fun? Ed Webb shared this video and started a great discussion on his website about the pedagogy of fun. I would like to continue the discussion here, because I do think that the educational system is programmed to make learning tedious. Exploration, discovery, problem-solving, and collaboration should be fun, but often this part of learning is lacking in curricula. I believe it is the best part of learning, which is why I hope this video inspires you and maybe your staff! This tweet was recommended by Valentina Dodge, Karenne Sylvester, and Larry Ferlazzo.

Preaching to the Choir?

Often I hear we are preaching to the choir on Twitter, but I think people forget that the conversations we have on Twitter are extended to our schools. Bill Montana demonstrates how he enlightens other educators at his school in his post, Starting Conversation. He shares several resources, which any educator could use with their PLN to begin a conversation, therefore, challenging educators to reflect upon their teaching methodologies. Included in this post is this inspirational video by Alan November.

Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November from Brian Mull on Vimeo.

Famous Failures

Nancy Blair introduced the following video, “If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived.” This video of famous failures would be a great way to spark discussion with students.

Photoshop App for the IPhone

Kyle Pace shared important news about Adobe Photoshop’s app for the IPhone! To find out more about this incredible app visit this post!

95 Websites to Bookmark

Paula Naugle shared this website that describes 95 websites to bookmark! I found some really interesting websites I had not already bookmarked like FlashEarth.com which could be used with students to explore the earth virtually! This tweet was recommended by Amber Teamann.

Would You Please Block?

Paula White recommended a thought-provoking post in which an instructional technologist shares his response to those who request he block distracting websites. You really should visit this blog and read the letter! I loved it!

**Add the people in this post to your PLN by using Russel Tarr’s mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!**

edwebb, bmontana, blairteach, kylepace, plnaugle, 8Amber8, paulawhite, larryferlazzo, vale24, kalinagoenglish

On the mindmap, click on the earth icons to follow the links to the Twitter profiles, blogs or websites! You can also make this mindmap smaller or larger and move it around. If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• September Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• My Week in Tweets by Valentina Dodge.
• The Blogosphere, the Twitterverse (ELT 08/09) by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenge:

Share one of these videos with at least one teacher at your school or with your students!

Would you like to recommend a favorite tweet for next week? Please contact me to share your favorite Tweet! Please mark the tweet as a favorite so that I can find the tweet!

In order to be cutting edge and stay relevant in any career field, you need a Personal Learning Network (PLN)! A PLN consists of individuals who you choose to take part in your professional development. These individuals share resources, exchange ideas with you, offer support, and collaborate with you. Twitter is one of the quickest ways to establish a PLN. However, many educators new to Twitter may not understand how the process works. In the beginning, I used to only update then I discovered how to engage with others in order to build a strong PLN.

If I only knew then what I know now…

You probably do not have the time to read all the Twitter materials available, but do you have 3 minutes and 20 seconds? In the PRESTO below, I share with you how I continue to build my PLN using Twitter.

What is a PRESTO?

PRESTO, PRESent your TOpic, is a video presentation style created by Heike Philp. In a PRESTO, the speaker creates a PowerPoint of 10 slides that auto-advance every 20 seconds, which means the entire presentation is only 3 minutes and 20 seconds long. You can do the PRESTO on any topic you wish and Heike will coach you through it in an online meeting platform. Creating a PRESTO with Heike really prepares you for video presentations. During the process, I learned about lighting, nonverbal communication, voice, pitch, and presence. Therefore, I recommend you read Heike Philp’s post for more information about PRESTO and how you can take part in this type of professional development.

More Resources

by Oliver Widder, Geek and Poke, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 License

To make your Twitter adventure much easier, please visit these links and resources:

• To learn more about each role, check out my guest post on Burcu Akyol’s blog, Spread Your Knowledge: Join Twitter.
• Stacy Bodin’s website, Twitter Help for Educators, with over 300 educators to follow!
• Karenney Sylvester’s Teacher’s Guide to Twitter!
• Youtube channel with video tutorials on using Tweetdeck, Delicious, RSS Readers, EchoFon, RSS Flash G, and more!
• EchoFon- Free Iphone app that acts as a browser for Twitter
• RSS Flash G- Tweet your favorite RSS feeds in seconds, share with others on Google reader, save in Delicious

Challenge:

Make a PRESTO or try one of the tools mentioned in this post!

You may want to subscribe to receive regular updates, leave a quick comment of how one of these tools helped you, tweet this, or share this series with your Personal Learning Network (PLN) through your RSS reader or Delicious account.

Is this your first visit, then I invite you to check out the rest of this weekly series, What Did They Tweet?, in which I post some of my favorite educational tweets.

If the mindmap is not coming out in the RSS reader, you can click on the image to go to the original mindmap.

Power of Twitter

Marisa Pavan shared a magical post this week about the power of Twitter. In the post, you will read about Marlooz, a filmmaker and reporter, who had her laptop taken at a conference. Her Twitter PLN came to the rescue and started a collection to buy her a new laptop! My own PLN has been fantastic about making me feel better when bad things in life occur. Stories like these show that Twitter is not a waste of time or all about self promotion as some believe. Instead, Twitter is a way to gain support, knowledge and inspiration from amazing people.

Edtech in Schools

Teachers can use educational technology to inspire their very young students! Ozge Karaoglu demonstrates how to use various tools with kindergarten students in her class wiki. Her tweet shows another example of how her young English language learners in Turkey use technology to learn English. Check out the video!

Little Elephant from ozge karaoglu on Vimeo.

For an idea on how to set-up your wiki page for your classroom, check out Jason Fournier’s Algebra wiki. Wiki’s are better as class websites than stagnate pages. You have various ways to embed and set-up the tools you will be using throughout the school year. Moreover, you can get parents and students involved through various tools. Jason has a parent and student survey set-up as well as Edmodo, Engrade, Google, Delicious, Weseed, and Audio Pal.

Eric Sheninger, a principal at New Milford High School, has shared his Delicious links with students. What an innovative idea! One student let him know he used the bookmarks for his Calculus homework!

Lesson Idea

I love tweets that inspire lesson ideas! Crista Anderson shares a wonderful website. Time magazine lists cover stories back to 1995. English language learners can reflect on where they were when certain news occurred. These cover stories could also be used in various content classes. The teacher can have students make a timeline of cover stories on a specific topic, create their own cover stories of an event, or write an article to go with the cover story. Each cover story comes with a lesson plan and is available in Spanish.

Add the people in this post to your PLN by using Russel Tarr’s mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!

mtranslator, ozge, s1mpl1fy, NMHS_principal, cristama, larryferlazzo, kalinagoenglish

On the mindmap, click on the earth icons to follow the links to the Twitter profiles, blogs or websites! You can also make this mindmap smaller or larger and move it around. If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• August Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• The Blogosphere, the Twitterverse (ELT 08/09) by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenge:

Create a Delicious bookmark for your classes or a class wiki!

Would you like to recommend a favorite tweet for next week? Please contact me to share your favorite Tweet! Please mark the tweet as a favorite so that I can find the tweet!

Happy Labor Day!

I have noticed the mindmap is not coming out in the RSS reader so I have included the image as well. If this is your first visit, then I invite you to check out the rest of this weekly series, What Did They Tweet?, in which I post some of my favorite educational tweets. On the mindmap, click on the earth icons to follow the links to the Twitter profiles, blogs or websites! You can also make this mindmap smaller or larger and move it around. If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates!

Games Children Play

Chad Calease shared a beautiful video about the game of tag. In the video, people from all over the world share their personal anecdotes and feelings about the game of tag! This tweet came as a response to a tweet about Marisa Constantinides’ post about the power of play for education. In this post, Marisa lists several games that children play and explains the learning involved in each type of game.

New Teacher Survival Guide

Giselle Santos shared a link to the Discovery Educator’s New Teacher Survival Central! Many of us have started a new school year and know someone who might benefit from this site. In several schools, new teachers are left to learn the ropes for themselves. Teaching is a tough job and for many new teachers they find out that teaching is a lot more work. Moreover, they find out that their students are not what they expected. If you have not been able to get these teachers on board with Twitter, then try sharing a website that you found through Twitter!

ESL Links

Larry Ferlazzo shared the exciting news that BrainPop ESL has just launched and is free! Larry also provides useful information and an honest evaluation of the BrainPop website in this blog post. BrainPop is an excellent website to use with students in every subject. The website is appealing due to the almost comic like characters and multimedia presentations. However, the website only offers free access to some of its content.

Burcu Akyol shared a link to a list of wikis to use with English language learners. I love wikis and will usually retweet those others have created. Wikis are extremely user-friendly and provide the educator with a variety of options. Students can easily add content to wikis, which engages them! Parents will usually enjoy a wiki, because they can leave comments and interact on the website as well!

Jason Renshaw offers various curriculum materials for English language learners on his English Raven website. Several educators including Larry Ferlazzo have commented on the usefulness of Jason’s materials. He has spent years creating these materials and is now letting teachers decide what they would like to pay to use these materials. If you do not have enough time to create your own materials for English language learners and want to find materials that will engage them then consider checking out the English Raven website!

Add the people in this post to your PLN by using Russel Tarr’s mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!

englishraven, burcuakyol, larryferlazzo, feedtheteacher, marisa_c, shapah, kalinagoenglish

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• August Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• The Blogosphere, the Twitterverse (ELT 08/09) by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenge:

Share one of these links with a fellow teacher. Give your Twitter PLN the credit!

Would you like to recommend a favorite tweet for next week? Please contact me to share your favorite Tweet! Please mark the tweet as a favorite so that I can find the tweet!

Do you like the new look?

The What Did They Tweet? series has gotten a new look thanks to Mind42 a tweet by my very dear friend, Ozge! If this is your first visit, then I invite you to check out the rest of this weekly series, What Did They Tweet?, in which I post some of my favorite tweets, which either are thought-provoking or provide useful educational technology links. Click on the mindmapping link and add these individuals to your Personal Learning Network (PLN). On the mindmap, click on the earth icons to follow the links to their Twitter profiles, blogs or websites, and the useful links they provided! You can also make this mindmap smaller or larger and move it around. If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates!

#Edchat Guest: Alfie Kohn

Perhaps, you were fortunate enough to be part of the momentous occasion when #edchat became the top 5 trending topic on Twitter. I call this momentous, because rarely does an educational related hashtag become a trending topic. This occasion would not be possible if Alfie Kohn had not been fantastic enough to agree to be our #edchat guest! These are a four of the thought-provoking tweets that I had to reflect upon later.

Click on the link to find out how you can be part of the #Edchat movement, a collaboration between Tom Whitby, Steven Anderson, and me (ShellTerrell).

Animoto

Animoto, one of my favorite video making tools for students, just got better. As Steven Anderson points out you can now add video to Animoto. Moreover, Animoto is free for educators. Unfortunately, I already paid for the service before realizing this fact. Read Jerry Swiatek‘s blog post to see how he used Animoto with his students for them to introduce themselves.

Thought-provoking

Added to my list of thought-provoking tweets is the TakeApart website, provided by Tom Barrett. The website is a very useful tool for teaching socially and culturally responsive curriculum. Students need to be aware of the issues impacting the world. Too many times, students live in a microcosm. In order for students to begin to collaborate and problem solve global issues, we must make them aware. TakeApart offers multimedia, such as images and audio to move students emotionally.

Stephen Ransom points out his student’s observation about the teachers not knowing how to use Smartboards. Unfortunately, I have seen this topic too often in my Master’s discussion forums. Several school districts still fail to train teachers on how to integrate technology effectively into the curriculum.

I love the quote Teri Wilkins retweeted from one of my favorite bloggers, Webstudio 13. We should motivate our students daily. Motivation is what will ignite our students into action. Passionate teachers often breed passionate and active students. Part of being a passionate teacher is motivating your students to react to issues in the world, have incredible dreams, and to reach their goals.

Have you missed my previous favorite tweets of the week? Just click here for the posts!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• August Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• The Blogosphere, the Twitterverse (ELT 08/09) by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenge:

Use Animoto or TakeApart to inspire your students.

Would you like to recommend a favorite tweet for next week? Please contact me to share your favorite Tweet! Please mark the tweet as a favorite so that I can find the tweet!