Catching up with Educators today

I followed 5 different educators on my professional twitter, and all of them offer great ideas and give different information and opinions on different subjects. The 5 who I followed were:

1. Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman1) - is an Educator who is a huge supporter of technology for students. He also is the moderator of the #edchat. He is a great follow and has a lot of knowledgeable tweets
2. Steven Anderson (@web20classroom) - is a co founder of #edchat, and is nationally recognized for his views on education and technology. He even made Edublogs top 50 twitters of the year!
3. William Chamberlain (@wmchamberlain) - is a junior high teacher who tweets about different things he encounters every day.
4.  Eric Sheninger (@NMHS_ Principal)- offers great information that principals go through every day, and although he doesn't tweet that often his tweets are all great.
5. Rob Griffith (@rgriffithjr) - Is an instructor who focuses on curriculum and how you can help build it.

Participating in an Educational Chat

I decided to participate in an education chat. I choose the #edchat which was very interesting. You get to vote on a topic that a somewhat moderator (Jerry Blumengarten or @cybraryman1 ) talks about and bounces ideas off of the different people involved in the chat. You communicate by using the hash tag. I choose to favorite different tweets that I agreed on, and get involved at not that intense of a level. The topic voted on was discussing Common Core and standardized testing, and it was very interesting to see what other educators and future educators thought. Some had ideas that were relatively similar to mine, and others had some very different opinions. Either way I really learned a lot and highly recommend it!

Education Twitter Chats

One of the many advantages of twitter is that you can receive great information in seconds from other educators all over the world. One of these platforms that people use is by using hash tags to connect with other educators I looked over two different twitter chats, the first was for new teachers who shared different questions and struggles that they had in the classroom by communicating with the hash tag #ntchat. This was an awesome resource for new teachers on Twitter!
The next chat i looked at was #edchat. This is another platform where educators share more conversation based ideas compared to #ntchat.

The Creation of a Twitter Account

I have had a twitter account for a long time, so it is nothing new to me. However, transferring over from a personal Twitter to an educational one is somewhat of a challenge. The main points to remember in my opinion are:

• Pick a username that is professional, and parents wont find odd if they want to look you up.
• Have your description say something important about you so your followers can know a little more just at first glance. 

If you follow these tips and use your common sense, you cant go wrong with making a professional Twitter.