Is Twitter a useful professional development tool?

My answer would be a definite yes!  The usefulness lies in how you use it.  This requires a bit of a learning curve, which I am still on and careful choice of who you follow.

 My journey started by signing up just over 7weeks ago as @hdaze. I was unsure about using my name and making an idiot of myself.  I didn’t put up a photo or profile initially and I just lurked to get a sense of how things worked.

What really got me started was seeing a colleague welcoming and introducing others I knew to her twitter network so I took a deep breath, put my profile and photo up, made contact with @SarahStewart and haven’t looked back since.

Early on I came across the following Youtube clip and started to wonder if twitter wasn’t a self-serving unconnected platform (perhaps it is for some).

But as I started to find good connections to follow I realised that the potential of twitter is fabulous for newbies like me.

Advantages include:

·      so many fantastic links to articles, tools, and ideas that will enhance my own practice.

·      meeting some amazing new people both in NZ and around the world and developing new links and contacts

·      experiencing a real sense of connectivism in relation to my own learning.

Disadvantages include:

·      finding myself starting to think in phrases of 140 characters or less.

·      Trying to restrain myself from feeling the need to follow every link in case I miss out on something.

My useful tips for newbies wanting to use Twitter as a professional development tool include:

·      Link in with someone you know for an introduction to others (made such a difference for me)

·      Take a week or two just to explore.

·      Choose carefully who you want to follow, this can build up slowly.

·      Find useful tools like Tweetdeck or Twitterfox to help manage following tweets once you have a few people to follow. One of the things I like about Tweetdeck is the ability to put people into groups; I can see up to 5 different columns of tweets on screen at one time – this means I can group my favourites together.

·      When you have found someone that you like following, check out who they are following as it can give you good suggestions for your own list.

·      Another way to find people to follow is to use the search tool putting in topics that you are interested in and see what comes up.

·      Experimentation will help you find the people that share information that is of most use to you and that you can feel connected to.

·      Start tweeting before too long – it adds to the sense of connection and you never know what useful tips, hints and connections come from putting yourself out there. This is the next step that I hope to do more of. At the moment I am so busy reading I’m not contributing much back.

 

I enjoy those who tweet a mix of personal with their professional comments as this adds the interpersonal element and helps the connectedness. Getting used to Twitter does take some self-discipline for people like me who love to absorb information but with careful choices it’s a lot of fun and adds so much to my personal learning.