Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Use of Twitter for Professional Networking

Twitter is best known as a social networking site, but what are the implications for professional networking?  As a new librarian, I have started following quite a few gurus in the literary and tech world as well as professional organizations, book publishers, colleagues, professors and classmates. As I was reading through their tweets this week, here are a few things that caught my eye.

Kathy Schrock (@kathyschrock) is an educational technologist and speaker.  I had never heard the term app-smashing (using multiple apps to complete a single project) before I read her tweet.  I watched her video link and realized that I was already doing this to an extent but had never thought that it had a specific name or how many apps you could use together in one project.  The possibilities in the classroom/library are endless.

Minecraft is a hot topic in elementary school.  Kids just love the never ending possibilities of creation.  Linda W. Braun (@lbraun2000) tweeted about student use of  Minecraft to learn coding and as a creative outlet while sharing a link to the Educator Innovator Blog which further discussed it's implications for 21st Century Learning.

This tweet from Tony Vincent (@tonyvincent) was very useful.  Last school year, I dreaded turning on the AppleTV because I knew my first graders would start yelling out the movie titles that would appear on the home screen no matter how many times I asked them not to.  This article on tweaking the AppleTV for classroom use is pure genius. I'm sure you can guess what the first thing I did when I arrived at school this morning was!  I even shared it with my campus technologist.


 Not only can you share interesting articles with others, you can use Twitter to promote your blog, website, or Facebook page.  Buffy J. Hamilton (@buffyjhamilton) did just that in the following tweet.  As a Twitter newbie, the limit of 140 characters can be frustrating, but if you have other resources where you can post detailed ideas, you can link them together with a tweet.

The Daring Librarian (@GwynethJones) shared this great book by  Donalynn Miller -Becoming a Lifelong Reader.  Her link also led to Donalynn Miller's blog in which she discusses the main idea of her writing.  I have added this book to my list of books to read soon.

Another interesting post for me was tweeted by Jim Lerman (@jimlerman) about the use of bookmarking tools for teachers and students.  I recently was introduced to Symbaloo and was instantly hooked!  I made a board for my Information Literacy Center webpage right away.
Is Twitter a good way to network professionally?  For me the answer is yes.  As a busy librarian, student, mother, and wife, time is pretty short at times.  So being able to access resources on my limited time and at odd hours - generally late at night is definitely a perk.  I can share tweets with people I think would find them useful and Twitter makes it easy to share by creating a link to embed tweets in web pages or blogs or to email a link. I'm looking forward to reading more tweets and getting better at making my own!

- Lisa
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2 comments:

  1. Elizabeth GrossSeptember 3, 2015 at 9:13 AM

    Do you think we should explore app smashing in this course? Is that appropriate? I've been thinking about expanding into that; wonder what you think...

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    1. UnknownSeptember 3, 2015 at 7:36 PM

      I would love to explore app smashing in greater detail. I know I have barely touched the surface of possibilities with the things I've done. I know that there are so many ideas and ways to combine the apps that I haven't even thought about. I think it's very appropriate for this course because as a library media specialist, I am teaching technology to elementary students and I think the students would find it useful.

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