The Power of Twitter

For the past few weeks, I have been exploring the web application Twitter. This is an amazing social networking application that gives people with common interests the opportunity to share and collaborate on new ideas. I started my exploration by finding and following some of my friends and fellow educators. I quickly discovered the power of social networking. Many of the tweets that I read, included links to web pages that advertised new gadgets or applications, blogs, wikispaces and Google Docs that contain notes that were from conferences or events that were relevant to educational technology. In most cases, the sites that I visited were new me.

I started to follow several people who obviously had a passion for using technology to motivate and engage their students in learning. One person that I began to follow is Lisa Parisi, she is a fellow DEN Star Educator and has been teaching for twenty years. In one of her tweets, she listed a wikispace that she and her students created with a classroom in New Zealand. The name of the project is Comparing Hemispheres. Not only is this a great example of global collaboration and getting children actively engaged in learning, but it also inspired me to think of a project that I could do with my kids using wikispaces. Stay tuned for further developments on that idea. Lisa also recommended a great website for book reviews which I shared with our staff called Booktagger. Thank you for sharing, Lisa.

Another person that I began following is a Principal at the Science and Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Chris Lehmann. It was through his tweets that I learned about Educon 2.0. Even though, I teach in Philadelphia and I try my best to seek and attend professional development opportunities that our district provides, discovering it on twitter is the first time I heard about this conference. Of course, a few days later an email was sent out from a district administrator advertising it as well :). But I do look forward to the agenda updates that Chris provides in his tweets.

Finally, I also want to thank and recognize Kristin Hokanson. Kristin is currently a CFF coach and takes pride in being on the cutting edge of educational technology. Kristin recently attend the Governor's Institute in Harrisburg. She had the opportunity to hear several Keynote speakers and shared her notes via twitter with those of us who could not attended using Google Docs. Not only did her notes contain a wealth of information, but I discovered a way to use Google Docs to collaborate and communicate with my yearbook committee. Thanks Kristin for keeping your twitter network informed.

I am really looking forward to building my twitter network and hope that I can contribute, share, and collaborate in order to help my students to use technology tools to become active learners throughout the 21st century. To follow me, search for tmcgrath or click the link in my side bar.