The Power of Twitter

Twitter has been a bone of contention with many teachers in my district, when the conversation about twitter comes up I have people talk about how they hate it. “I don’t care what someone has had for breakfast” is a common complaint.

I agree that some on twitter tend to tweet about way too much (I had Fruit Loops for breakfast by the way), I always try to stress to teachers that they have to filter.

I try to take the lessons that I have learnt from many avid tweeters:

Alec Couros has talked about how you don’t have to be looking at every single tweet that comes across your timeline. The important stuff will always resurface. Alec also talks about being a part of the conversation. That the benefit of twitter is that you build relationships with people all over the world.

I also love this post by Scott Mcleod If you were on Twitter which I didn’t actually see from Scott’s Twitter account, nor from my google reader (RIP) feed but rather from a retweet from someone else (which promotes Alec’s theory of good things will resurface).

Scott’s post talks about all the good things that you might have found if you were on twitter.  I do believe that twitter is a fantastic resource that allows educators to connect with like minded people that are connecting in new ways.

While I realize there will always be people that want to talk about the various details of their everyday life, these details make them a little bit more human and something that we can relate to.  The nice thing about twitter is that if you don’t like what they have to say you can tune them out with a single click.  The choice is yours.

What kind of leader are you?

I just love this picture by Edna Sacson it is so important to remember that in order to be successful in a school it is vital that we lead. Often times I think it is easy to fall into the trap of the manager and just tend to things from day to day. This is does not allow for a healthy system.