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.

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!

Who will you follow this #teachertuesday?

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 images to see the original tweet and add these individuals to your Personal Learning Network (PLN). Moreover, you will find links and snapshots of their blogs by clicking on their names! If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates!

Why Twitter?

As you tackle a new school year, several educators will ask you this question. People in my PLN weekly share useful information to help answer this question. Candace Townsley (@GiftedTeecher) provided a link to Christine Morris’ post on using Twitter as a teaching tool for her college class. Christine provides tips to motivating students to use Twitter and the opportunities Twitter provides for real time research. She also discusses the obstacles she faced and offer tips for improvement. Check out Candace Townsley’s blog!

Mark Oehlert (@Moehlert) provided a unique way to use Twitter when giving presentations. Several conventions, workshops, webinars, seminars, and conferences are using hashtags for Twitter. After giving a presentation, check the hashtags and analyze what your audience really grasped from the event. What a fantastic idea! Encourage your audience members to tweet during the discussion. Not only does this get you publicized, but your audience will remember the majority of your points. Mark Oehlert provides more great advice in his blog!

This tweet by Crista Anderson (@cristama) I thought would fit nicely on a coffee mug! Visit Crista Anderson’s blog for more of her witty reflections! Often, I do get sidetracked by the thought-provoking discussions or useful links providing by my PLN. However, as Nancy Blair (@Blairteach) points out, “At least it’s productive procrastination.” With this tweet series, I have to say I am definitely being productive with my tweets. Visit Nancy Blair’s blog for more of her great insights!

A Video Inspiring Global Collaboration

This summer I participated in several global collaborations and established relationships with educators in Turkey, Greece, Italy, Australia, Japan, France, and the US. For this reason, I had to share the Matt international dance video tweeted by Isabelle Jones (@ICPJones) and Michael Fawcett (@TeacherNZ), which is more than inspiring! Matt began a video dancing in several countries. Sometimes he asked people to join him. Check out Isabelle Jones’ blog!

Michael Fawcett joined other educators from New Zealand to create their own dance video, which were inspired by the Matt videos. The video collaboration was fun and inspirational that I had to include the actual video from the website as well! Check out Michael Fawcett’s class blog for other amazing projects he does with his students!

Cool Link for the School Year!

Have you ever wondered what your students can do with the various Web 2.0 tools you learned about this summer? Larry Ferlazzo gives inspiration by providing you with a link, which demonstrates how his students use several of the Web 2.0 tools he tweets and updates daily on his blog! Larry’s post provides categories of Web 2.0 tools and lists the best student projects under each category. For additional examples of his students’ amazing work you may want to visit his English website!

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:

• Gr8 Edu-tweets by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.
• Monthly Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.

Challenge:

Share the value of Twitter with at least one member of your school community this month!

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!

As we enter our classrooms again we must remember the digital footprint we have left behind as Ruth Cohenson (@tearoof) reminds us in this Tweet! If you have been using Twitter as often as I have, then you must have 1000s of tweets in as a little as a few months! Imagine for a minute where your online thoughts, images, and conversations have traveled? I am a part of various Nings and social media sites that I carelessly lose track of, however, I try to leave positive footprints wherever I go in case my students happen to run across my digital path.

One area you may have left a digital footprint is on this weekly series, What Did They Tweet?, in which I post some of my favorite tweets, which either are thought-provoking like Ruth’s tweet or provide a useful link.  Below are a few more tweets I found interesting this week. Click on the images (including the one above) to see the original tweet and add these individuals to your Personal Learning Network (PLN). Moreover, you will find links and snapshots of their blogs by clicking on their names! If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates or check out previous posts by clicking here!

Surprises from Students- Good

I look forward to a new school year, because this means I get to become inspired and awed by my new batch of students’ ideas and creativity. Never cease to become amazed by your students! Here’s an amazing student’s work courtesy of Steven Anderson (@web20classroom). Eleven year-old Adora Svitak blogged, The School Principal Just Friended Me, which is better than some of my own blog posts.

Another inspirational tweet about a student came via DigitalMaverick. The student in this case was his own daughter!

Surprises from Students- Bad

Some of our teaching days will force us to encounter unpleasant surprises from students. Phil Hart’s tweet reminded me of the change that is still needed within schools who have students who use violence as a means of expression. I remember teaching in the US and volunteering at some of these schools including alternative schools. I volunteered in several of the programs to help students find more productive ways of expressing the violence, abuse, and pressure they deal with daily. Phil Hart, Jo Hart, and I discussed ways to motivate the violent students in schools. Our discussion reminded me that this issue is a global issue!

Cool Use of Wordle

A new tool you may have heard some buzz about is Wordle. Although I have seen several tweets on using Wordle in the classroom, this link provided by Matthias Heil really excited me! As the EFL 2.0 site explains through a slide presentation of various Wordle hints the student guesses the topic. The educator can create their own Guess the Wordle presentation or use one of the ones from the Guess the Wordle wiki! This type of activity would make introducing the lesson of the day very engaging for students! I love when I find fantastic links to use in my classroom like the one provided by Matthias!

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

Challenge:

If you are a blogger, write a post extending any of these tweets! Let me know if you’d like to host the post here!

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!

The school year is here, which means educators need to be encouraged and fed continuously through their Personal Learning Network (PLN). Right now, you are in an environment where you can incite change. However, many of us can become preoccupied with the madness that surrounds our professional calling! Listed are a few tweets to keep you motivated and enriched as you inspire change within your students and the educators around you. These tweets are listed in order from the most current to the earliest tweet in the week. If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe to receive regular updates or check out previous posts by clicking here!

Valedictorians in Their Own Words

Margaret Haun supplied this very inspirational link from the New York Times that shares images and audio of valedictorians giving advice. Whenever you wonder why you give so much to your students, just imagine the enormous impact and influence you have in their lives. How do you help create forward thinking within your students? Follow more of Margaret Haun’s (@Ellyn32) tweets or visit her blog!

Words to Remember

Ced Paine’s quote via Adrian Bruce is just what we need to motivate us to keep up with our PLNs and professional development. Adrian created a humorous cartoon on his blog worth checking out to illustrate his point that educators can choose to stay current with educational technology. Check out more of Ced Paine’s favorite links by checking out this Diigo site or follow Ced Paine on Twitter!

Japan Standardizing the English Accent

As an English language teacher I keep up with various issues concerning linguistics and phonetics. Neal Chambers incited thought-provoking discussion with this article by asking his PLN, “What do you think?” If you ever want to engage in discussion, ask your PLN questions. Moreover, most of your PLN will be directed to inspect the link if a question is attached or you place a strong opinion before or after the link. Engaging others in discussions helps you hone your own opinions regarding various issues in your field! Engage in more thought-provoking tweets by following Neal Chambers or reading his personal blog. You can also access various materials for teaching English language learners at his site, English Sparks.

Second Life Graduation

Entering the school year means lesson planning. Therefore, you should be quite familiar with the Bloom’s Taxonomy method of  having students use higher-order thinking skills. Tamas Lorincz provided one of the best sites I have seen explaining Bloom’s Taxonomy.  Zaid Ali Alsagoff actually created a wheel of the levels and provides various images, links, and resources about Bloom’s Taxonomy. You can even download a free pdf! Follow Tamas for more valuable links or engage with him on his wonderful blog!

Second Life Graduation

The beginning of the school year often makes you long for the end of the year when your students graduate and move on to the next level of their learning. Russel Tarr is well-known for providing extremely useful links and runs two great sites, Active History and Class Tools! His tweet once again shows why I am so excited about using Second Life for teaching my adult English language learners this year! Bryant & Stratton College hosted the first college graduation on Second Life in June and the guest speaker was Second Life founder Philip Rosedale. All this was performed on a virtual learning platform! Follow Russel Tarr to keep up to date with his various educational links!

You may know that several other teachers and I sponsor free teacher orientations on Second Life. The main reason we do this is because Second Life engages students with visuals, interactive exhibits, and opportunities to engage in thought-provoking dialogue.

If you would like to see the educational opportunities Second Life has to offer then join our SLife is Life ning full of educators willing to mentor you!

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

Challenge:

Share Twitter with another educator at your school. You can show them this series for great examples of how Twitter adds to your professional development!

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!

Visitors, time zone changes, vacation, Master’s program… Unless you are a Twitteraholic you probably miss several great tweets within the week. Here are a few of my favorite tweets that have engaged me or helped me find a useful link! Moreover, I hope this weekly series shows you how to engage others with your tweets, develop a Personal Learning Network (PLN), cause change, or add to your professional development. Twitter is a tool with several uses. Hopefully, these tweets provide you with different ways to use Twitter. If you enjoy these tweets, I encourage you to follow these people. These tweets are listed in order of occurrence with the first tweet being the earliest tweet in the week.

Tweeting for a Cause

Twitter is being revered for its ability to incite awareness for causes among a massive audience. Probably, the most notable was the situation in Iran; however, tweeters often choose to support various causes. Shonah Kennedy’s tweet is a perfect example of challenging twitterers to take action to save the environment! Several critics have discredited Twitter as a channel for real change.  Perhaps, changing the color of my avatar is not enough, but I do believe tweets like this can cause real change.

Extending the Conversation

Some people I have thought-provoking conversations with are not teachers! According to  Chris Harrington‘s bio, he was in the navy and a marketer. Now, he is an acoustic ambient musician, occasional translater, and blogger living in Japan. I have read Chris’ blog, which talks about real life issues. Below is just a snippet of the discussion we had on if most students are digital natives. People do not have to agree all the time on Twitter. The important part is to involve yourself in a thought-provoking discussion every once in awhile to solidify your beliefs.

Warnings

Often tweets from my PLN will warn others of spammers, scams, and so forth! One tweet I received this week warned me that someone might be stealing my content. Unfortunately, a wonderful English language teacher, web designer, and curriculum writer, Jason Renshaw (English Raven), had a person republish his material on the web without permission. Jason, through his English Raven web site, provides English language teachers with a lot of support and materials. The person had over 5000 documents listed so his warnings were very real! I am happy the company took his document down.

Copyright Concerns

A few hours after Jason’s tweet, Jo Hart, started a discussion on copyright concerns with her tweet. Below is a snippet of the discussion that several more individuals joined. Sue Lyon-Jones continued to add to the conversation with advice, tips, and thoughts on showing teachers and students the importance of respecting copyright. On Twitter, please feel free to join conversations and add your experiences or tips. Doing this ensures that those you follow get to know you. When others know you, this makes collaborating on various projects much easier! Heike Philp provided a useful link for searching for Creative Common images, which are free to use for educational purposes.  However, you must check the rules regarding the author’s choice for you to attribute the work appropriately.

Follow Their Tweets!

The best way to enjoy “what they tweeted” daily is to add these engaging people as friends on Twitter. Do this easily by clicking on their profiles.

• Shonah Kennedy (@MissShonah)
• Chris Harrington (@charringtonjp)
• Jason Renshaw (@EnglishRaven)
• Jo Hart (@JoHart)
• Sue Lyon-Jones (@esolcourses)
• Heike Philp (@heikephilp )

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

Want to explore how to use Twitter for discussions? Join Tom Whitby and I for our weekly #edchat discussions!

Challenge:

Engage in a thought-provoking discussion with a person you follow!

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!