District Administration - April 2012 - (Page 51)

By Marion Herbert #EdChat? How administrators can sift through the noise to find their voice on Twitter and refine their personal learning network. n Feb. 23, Steven Anderson, instructional technologist for Winston-Salem/Forsyth County (N.C.) Schools, celebrated his three-year anniversary—on Twitter. Anderson began exploring Twitter in 2009 as a way of finding people with similar interests, opposing views, and resources on integrating technology in the classroom to share with teachers and staff in his district of 57,000 students. In 2009, Twitter, the social-networking platform that allows users to post content up to 140 characters in length, was gaining momentum. Users produced nearly 100 million tweets per quarter the year before—a 250 percent increase from 2007. During this time, Anderson began connecting with educators Shelly Terrell, a foreign language teacher working in Germany, and Tom Whitby, a retired English teacher turned education professor at St. Joseph’s College in New York. These three Twitter pioneers saw the education conversation evolving on Twitter and wanted to organize it for other educators to join. Terrell suggested using a hashtag symbol, a Twitter feature that when prefixed to a word flags your post so any Twitter user can read it by searching that same word. ASCD Why All the Chatter About O With that, #edchat was born. In 2012, #edchat continues to garner more followers each week, and nearly 100 specialized educator chats have evolved as a result. Twitter has grown to more than 600 million users, and while it may seem as though tweets about Justin Bieber and what celebrities are eating for lunch have cluttered the Twitter ecosystem, educators continue to connect, share and learn through this medium. Although arguably one of the most popular education conversations to follow on Twitter, #edchat is hardly alone. Hashtag conversations have been popping up over the last few years, and many have caught on for specialized conversations on elementary schools, technology, professional development, mobile learning, principals and administrators, among others. Most principals and other administrators on Twitter acknowledge that there are more teachers on Twitter than administrators. It is unknown whether that is due to the simple fact that teachers outnumber administrators, or to the greater likelihood that younger and more tech-savvy teachers use Twitter more than typically older administrators do, or to some other factor, Steven W. Anderson @ASCD The global leader in providing programs, products and services that empower educators to support the success of each learner. Alexandria, VA (D.C. area) http://ascd.org @web20classroom Educator, Speaker, Blogger, #Edchat Co-Creator, #140Conf Character, Edublogs Twitterer of the Year, ASCD Conf. Scholar, Do You Use Social Media in Education? Winston-Salem, NC http://blog.web20classroom.org www.DistrictAdministration.com April 2012 51 http://blog.web20classroom.org http://www.ascd.org http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - April 2012

District Administration - April 2012
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Special Ed Update
Facilities Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Robust and Safe BYOD
Success Breeds Success
Funding Building Projects in a Tough Economy
Widening Participation to an IB Education
Why All the Chatter about #EdChat?
Supervisor’s Opinion
Going Mobile
New Directions
Crisis Response
Student Counsel
Product Focus
Online Edge

District Administration - April 2012