Leveraging Your PLN with Twitter
By Matt Scott
Dan Butler and Theresa Stager started out their session by reminding us how we can use Twitter as a means of connecting with other professionals and how it can be a great way to provide yourself with free professional development. But watching the Twitter feed roll by with everything else you are following can be a little mind-boggling. If you are looking to strengthen your Personal Learning Network (PLN) through your Twitter connections, then you must be able to filter out the information you are viewing.
To help us organize our Twitter feed, Dan and Theresa introduced us to Tweetdeck! Tweetdeck is a tool to help you track and organize incoming tweets and to help you engage with your PLN. Following branded hashtags allow you to just view the information you are wanting to see at any given time. Using Tweetdeck, users can personalize their Twitter view by creating multiple columns which can allow you to view multiple hashtag saved searches at the same time.
Examples of branded hashtags given were:
- #NAESP15 – NAESP Conference Hashtag for 2015
- #principalpln – National Principal Personal Learning Network chat
- #IAedchat – Iowa Ed Chat
To grow as professional educators we must create a personal learning network (PLN) by following other professionals on Twitter. Using Twitter to connect with other professionals can be very rewarding—we can grow professionally through our interactions with other educational leaders from across the country—but watching the homepage Twitter scroll through can be overwhelming and it will only show live action in the moment. Using Tweetdeck to follow branded hashtags will help you broaden your Personal Learning Network (PLN) and can make your life on Twitter much easier by helping you organize your incoming information.
As a school principal, I want to continue to grow as a professional. After this session with Dan and Theresa I am more aware of the importance of strengthening my personal learning network (PLN) through the world of Twitter. I can already see the benefits of using Tweetdeck to help me organize my world of Twitter! Thanks Dan and Theresa!
Top resources:
— Matt Scott, principal at Creekside Elementary in Harvest, Alabama. You can reach Matt at matt.scott@lcsk12.org or on Twitter @PrincipalMS.
Visit NAESP’s Conference News page to find the latest updates from Long Beach.
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