bNetS@vvy proudly presents the third post from guest blogger Paula White, a teacher and ed tech advocate:
My last blog was about educators being all “A-Twitter” over connecting with other educators. In response to that blog, a commenter asked if there were any recommendations for finding good twitterers to follow for educational/good-for-kids kinds of tweets.
Of course there are. . . as teachers we tweet not only to connect with other people, but because we want to keep up with what’s new out there, we want to teach our children well, and we want to keep student learning fresh with great websites and resources. I am at one of my summer conferences now and attended the Edubloggercon East “unconference,” which happened the day before the real conference, “Building Learning Communities,” began. The last 45 minutes of the day, I experienced a “Web 2.0 Smackdown.” If you want to see all the tweets from that day, do a twitter search on #EBCE09, which was the hashtag attendees used when tweeting. (A hashtag–an abbreviation using the pound sign–allows the tweets to be aggregated together for a search engine looking for them.)
In a “Smackdown,” people have literally two minutes to get up and show and share a web resource. Thus, in a short amount of time, the attendees are introduced to a great number of web resources or technology tools that may or may not be new to them, but they are definitely shared with enthusiasm. The sharers have often figured out tricks and tips to share to make the tool or resource more useful to teachers in the classroom. Here is where you can find the resources shared from the Edubloggercon East “unconference,” with the notes that our official notetaker got from the lightning fast two-minute presentation.
Beyond that, parents can follow some educators on Twitter who are known for sharing great links to use with students. There are MANY amazing teacher “Tweeps” out there in the Twitterverse. If I had time, I could name easily a “Helpful Hundred” —but let’s start with the “Terrific Ten” below:
@KellyHines is a 4th grade teacher in North Carolina, so the links she shares are geared primarily to elementary, in all subjects. Check her Twitter profile for a link to her blog and her list of links she keeps on Diigo.
@RusselTarr is from France and one of his passions is history—but his links touch every subject area and every level. He is the author of ActiveHistory.co.uk + ClassTools.net.
@KeisaWilliams is a librarian of an elementary school in California, who is ALWAYS looking to learn and grow. She’s built her wiki here and tweeted recently she is on Twitter “for the progressive minded people.”
@AngelaMaiers is an educator in Iowa whose passion is literacy. She is the author of the book, Habitudes, and is as nice in person as she comes across on Twitter. Angela was one of the first people I followed on Twitter, and her links could keep me busy exploring for a week.
@GardenGlen is a middle school science teacher from Utah who loves to connect other science teachers on twitter. Follow his tweet, and you’ll find some interactive science sites as well as some gems for other people to follow and blogs to read.
@DianaDell recently got on my Twitter radar. She’s from Missouri and does what she calls “deep searches” to share some of the most unique (and coolest) links I see. She is almost ALWAYS retweeted (which means what she shares is repeated by others to their followers).
@cwebbtech is a Technology Facilitator form Minot, North Dakota who has degrees in both technology AND music. The tweets Chris shares run the gamut of topics, but are always worth checking out!
@Jackiegerstein ‘s twitter bio says, “I don’t do teaching for a living, I live teaching as my doing, and technology has AMPLIFIED the passion.” Almost every tweet she does is a link to an amazing resource!
@etalbert is an educator from Australia who has been a classroom teacher, a principal and is now in Instructional Technology. She often shares interactive sites and interesting readings about Web 2.0 tools.
@pdonaghy is a teacher from Dublin, Ireland who concentrates on sharing FREE web resources, including Open Source, Freeware, and Creative Commons materials.
And, of course, for an 11th, you can follow the librarian from my district who’s on Twitter, @mtechman. Melissa is an amazing lady who interacts thoughtfully with all on Twitter and is constantly finding and retweeting useful links from her tremendous group of librarian buddies.
Hope you enjoy this list.
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Paula White is a 30+ year veteran teacher, a Smithsonian Laureate, and a Golden Apple Award winner who has been recognized as an outstanding educator by the National Teacher Training Institute (NTTI), Phi Delta Kappa, the Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE), Discovery Education, T.H.E. Journal and Apple Computer. Paula has taught all elementary grade levels K-5 and was recently published in Chris Betcher’s book, The Interactive Whiteboard Revolution: Teaching With IWBs. She regularly presents at state and national conferences and is @paulawhite on Twitter. Her greatest honor, though, is being a grandma.
Follow Paula @PaulaWhite on Twitter.
August 1st, 2009 at 10:38 am
I would agree that the ‘Web 2.0 Smackdown’ is a great way to share ideas and applications in a short time. In addition, the format lends itself to live broadcasting enabling many more ‘virtual attendees’ to take part and share in the experience.
This year’s Edubloggercon prior to NECC09 is another good example and is well worth checking out – http://coolcatteacher.wikispaces.com/Web+2+Smackdown
Thanks Paula, truly honoured to be on the list and following you on Twitter! Two other great places to search for educators using twitter – http://www.iol.ie/~inchvec/edutwittersdir.html and
http://twitter4teachers.pbwiki.com/FrontPage