Lori Sabo
July 3, 2009
To Twitter or not to Twitter, that is the question. I'll be honest. I got an account, followed a few folks, and spent a few pleasurable evenings cyber stalking movie stars, seeing who they followed, and who the people they were following were following. It was a spiraling vortex of mundane and useless information. After a few weeks I found myself chanting the mantra, "Why do I care what these people are doing right now?"
Did I really need or even want to know when a spoiled starlet left Starbucks with latte in hand or when someone famous just had margaritas with another famous person? The answer was no. I was just about ready to disconnect myself from the entire micro-blogging phenomenon when I discovered another avenue....a completely different branch of the twitter tree...and one that has made me twitter-pated.
There is a whole horde of professional people out there sharing their knowledge and expertise with others and I had begun to find them. All of a sudden I was learning about great book titles, education news stories from around the U.S. and smart board lessons I could take into the classroom the next day. So now I encourage my friends and colleagues to get on board the twitter train.
Here are a few of my favorite folks to follow:
- James Hollis @jameshollis is from Aurora, Illinois. He is a professional development specialist for SMARTBoard users. If you use a SMARTBoard, you'll undoubetdly find useful information.
- KidderLit @KidderLit twitters the first line of children's books, often piquing my interest as a reader or writer (crafting good leads).
- Franki Sibberson @frankisibberson tweets about books to add to our "must read" piles, and links to blog posts worth reading.
- Brenda Power @brendapower offers serious professional development stuff and fun stuff as well.
- Reading Rockets @ReadingRockets posts interesting articles relevant to my life as a reader and a teacher who wants to impart a love of reading in my students.
- Donalyn Miller @donalynbooks is a prolific reader of young adult material and the kind of teacher you want to team with. Twitter lets you do it in a virtual way.
- George Couros @gcouros is the kind of a principal we would all love to have. His tweets are both personal and professional.
- Kristine Mraz @MrasKristine is a primary teacher who excells in teaching writing.
This article will give you good info if you are interested in getting started. It's a virtual handbook of how to's, tutorials, do's and don'ts and basically everything you need to know.
So, try it out. You can even follow me, Lori Sabo, if you want to.