Reconnecting with Twitter

If I remember correctly, I signed up for my first Twitter account eight years ago.  I was introduced to Twitter through a co-worker, soon to be new principal.  He was definitely a "twitter groupie" and led me to believe Twitter was the best thing since sliced bread.  Honestly, at first, I didn't quite understand it, perhaps because I am such a chatterbox, the limitations on characters was difficult for me to comprehend.  Overtime I did learn to tweet, use hashtags, participate in twitterchats and more.  It also became easier to condense my thoughts into 140, now 280, characters.  I began to see the value of the platform, but I honestly didn't love it.

Fast forward to my current position as an Instructional Design Coach, and I want to affirm my teachers and share the success through Twitter, but it's not that easy.  You might be wondering why I continue to use it if I don't love it.  The basic answer is our school district uses it and our superintendent stresses the importance of telling our story.   I do agree with his philosophy that if we aren't going to share the wonderful things public educators are doing, then who will, so I continue to put forth effort.  If I tweet and use our district hashtag, then others are more likely to see it and retweet it for more amplification opportunities.

To reach my goal of affirming my teachers through Twitter, I literally add "tweet" to my weekly To Do List; one quarter I even used a habit tracker to help me reach a professional goal of 3-5 tweets per week.  I didn't always reach it, but my preacher suggests we set a goal of reading our Bibles 7 days a week and be proud if we got to 5.  This is how I feel with my tweeting goal.   Any tweets are more tweets than I would have done previously.

This header is compiled of actual decor I have in my office.

In graduate school this week, I was assigned a Twitter Adventure, and thus Twitter and I were forced to reconnect on a deeper level.  My professor helped me remember some of the features I  had only minimally explored and/or didn't use to the fullest - hashtag searches, lists, and outside apps such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck.  I especially appreciated the site with all of the education hashtags and chats.  Through a few hashtag searches I found some helpful articles on instructional coaching, as well as some new people to follow.  As a Google Certified Trainer, I especially liked this article that I found through the hashtag #ETCoaches.  I'm currently working on planning professional learning for when teachers return to campus, so this was timely information.

While I didn't learn much about Twitter that I didn't already know, I did have the opportunity to play and explore, which reminded me of the power of sharing your voice through Web 2.0.  As I was exploring, I started to get some ideas of how I could use Twitter more effectively this school year as a way to engage my staff and amplify not only the coaching program, but their individual contributions to the students at Royse City High School.  We currently have a district hashtag, but I would also like to have a Royse City High School, or RCHS, hashtag for my teachers and to make accessing our tweets more easily.  I wasn't aware that I could share a Twitter list with others, so I could also make a Twitter List of staff members on Twitter to share with everyone.  

One of my main goals as the IDC is to help more students at RCHS have opportunities to communicate.  Through this week's exploration, I realized I could use some communication and engagement strategies with my educators that would hopefully encourage them to try more with their students - tweeting some educator polls, Twitter challenges, and possibly even a modified Twitter Chat for my teachers.  By modified, I am thinking maybe a question a week that teachers can respond to, sharing some of their great ideas and pictures of their successes in action.  Just as I am not a Twitter expert or even a frequent user, I know that not all of my teachers will participate, but perhaps we could create some ripples in our school with those that do.  When I was in the classroom, I used multiple ways to reach my students, Remind, Twitter, Weekly Email Newsletter, and Google Classroom.  I need to remember this same mentality with the educators and administration at RCHS and RCISD.

I appreciate the opportunity to reconnect with an old "friend acquaintance," and learn more about my classmates through their tweets.  Thank you, Dr. B, for challenging me to expand my ideas through our Twitter Adventure.