Here was my strategy to develop a Personal Learning Network (PLN) and make sure i am always connected to conversations and what others are doing, what's new, trending and so on;
- Search, on twitter, for a hastag that is relevant to you. It may be by subject area or by topic. A good one, relevant to our curriculum is #pypchat if you are in primary or #ibchat if you are in secondary. This will show you conversations and tweets about that specific subject or topic.
- Find a few people who have posted something interesting and follow them. See who they follow and follow them too. People typically follow you back.
- Reply to tweets and write your own tweets too and people may begin to follow you. Share photos, students work, lesson ideas or tools (be mindful of students' privacy when sharing photos and work samples). You can even ask questions, once you have followers, they may respond or re-tweet your question, reaching out to their followers and on and on it can go.
When you tweet, you may want to add a hashtag within your tweet to ensure that it reaches anyone who searches for that hashtag. So, people do not need to follow you to read your tweets. Create a new hashtag too!
From today on, you are on your own. Spend 10 minutes a day, or every other day;
- reading others' tweets,
- searching for particular conversations,
- tweeting or retweeting,
- letting students ask questions through you, or create a class twitter account (that you manage - if students are not old enough to manage the account),
- following a specialist in a particular field,
- engaging in conversations with other classes and by the way, here is a list of Primary (Ages 3 - 8 yrs) Classrooms That Tweet
Have fun!