It is about time that I sat down to write another entry in my blog. I plead guilty and have been slack over the past few weeks but I will put it down to priorities and being report writing time of the semester and all.
Anyhow let's get on with it................
I am constantly amazed at twitter. I know I wrote a blog about it last year but since then my use and knowledge of twitter has grown. More importantly my knowledge of how I can use it professionally has grown immensely.
I have built and developed my PLN over the past few years. PLN stands for Personal Learning Network. Basically this is a collection of educators who follow each other on twitter sharing links, ideas and thoughts. When I mention my PLN to my wife her reply is "But do you know these people?" No, but this is beside the point. Twitter (for me anyhow) is not personal the way a friend on FaceBook is.
I have learnt a tremendous amount from my PLN. New web 2.0 tools, handy tips that can be used in the classroom and upcoming conferences are just some takeaways I have gathered from twitter.
Of course I still use twitter socially. I keep up with news and sports details and my passions of rugby and basketball.
So what is a hashtag. This is it # If you add this to a tweet it is like sending your message to a group. I use a service called tweetdeck to read and send my tweets. Tweet deck can be divided into columns as seen below:
In these columns I receive tweets from the people I follow, direct messages from others but what
feature I like the most about the cloumns is to be able to search a hashtag.
Above you will see columns where I have searched for a hastag #iste2012 and #iste12. ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) is currently having its annual conference in San Diego California. It would be amazing to attend (if the school PD budget allowed). By searching the conference hashtags I have been able to view some of the presentations online, view the notes taken by a conference attendee and also find other people to add to my PLN.
If I can't be at the conference then twitter is doing a good job of keeping me in touch, hence the power of the hash tag.
Anyhow let's get on with it................
I am constantly amazed at twitter. I know I wrote a blog about it last year but since then my use and knowledge of twitter has grown. More importantly my knowledge of how I can use it professionally has grown immensely.
I have built and developed my PLN over the past few years. PLN stands for Personal Learning Network. Basically this is a collection of educators who follow each other on twitter sharing links, ideas and thoughts. When I mention my PLN to my wife her reply is "But do you know these people?" No, but this is beside the point. Twitter (for me anyhow) is not personal the way a friend on FaceBook is.
I have learnt a tremendous amount from my PLN. New web 2.0 tools, handy tips that can be used in the classroom and upcoming conferences are just some takeaways I have gathered from twitter.
Of course I still use twitter socially. I keep up with news and sports details and my passions of rugby and basketball.
So what is a hashtag. This is it # If you add this to a tweet it is like sending your message to a group. I use a service called tweetdeck to read and send my tweets. Tweet deck can be divided into columns as seen below:
In these columns I receive tweets from the people I follow, direct messages from others but what
feature I like the most about the cloumns is to be able to search a hashtag.
Above you will see columns where I have searched for a hastag #iste2012 and #iste12. ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) is currently having its annual conference in San Diego California. It would be amazing to attend (if the school PD budget allowed). By searching the conference hashtags I have been able to view some of the presentations online, view the notes taken by a conference attendee and also find other people to add to my PLN.
If I can't be at the conference then twitter is doing a good job of keeping me in touch, hence the power of the hash tag.
