# Twitter for Professional Development

The power of a passionate teacher cannot be underestimated ! This blog reflection has reminded me of one of my most influential lecturers at Waikato University, Dianne Forbes. As our ICT lecturer in variety of papers she challenged us to use Social Media as a method to reflect and connect with educators. Highlighted in her research article Forbes (2015) reports that "teachers are learners", so we were encouraged to have an open mind set about social media for professional development, before we could teach our students to connect this way.

We were prompted by Forbes (2015) to engage in a professional online social media site to learn how to: 

• Be Cybersafe: Protect your online identity and how to safeguard your professional reputation, integrity and privacy; 
• Being proactive: Establishing a professional online presence; 
• Lifelong learning: Using the Internet to build a personal/professional learning network; 
• Challenges: Expanding your repertoire of social networking tools for professional purposes

When I look back at how this all started I can see that over the last 4 years I have definitely grown in confidence when connecting in social media sites and I have definitely expanded my professional learning networks. My choice of social media was and still is Twitter. 

Challenges: 

The first step for me was to decide if I would use Twitter for my personal and professional online presence. I decided to keep my Twitter profile strictly professional. I think this has been key to the successful use of twitter for my professional development. 

Secondly managing all the updates, text messages: In this case I have chosen not to receive notifications in Twitter, except for certain people I am following. I feel in control of when and what I would like to learn and be a part of.  I think this is one of the most important parts of using social media for professional learning.

Benefits

The benefits of using social media relate back to the "teacher as learner" for me. Using Twitter has encouraged me to connect with other educators beyond the boundaries of our classroom.  Could this be exactly what we are aiming to guide our students to do?

The 2007 New Zealand Curriculum Achievement Objectives for eLearning states that eLearning may:

• assist the making of connections by enabling students to enter and explore new learning environments, overcoming barriers of distance and time;
• facilitate shared learning by enabling students to join or create communities of learners that extend well beyond the classroom;

Shapes et al; (2016) agree with this reporting that "Social media make it possible to involve and draw on the experience of people around the world" I hope that as I continue to develop as a learner myself that I will be able to lead my students to do the same.

A Highlight:

At the recent GAFE summit in Auckland I was so excited to meet Richard Wells, author of "A Learner's Paradise: How New Zealand is reimagining education". We had connected on Twitter prior to the conference, and now this connection has continued. 

References:

Forbes, D. (2015) Building Connections: Professional Online Presence and Learning Networks. Retrieved from  http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/9473/ForbesECSM15.pdf?sequence=5

Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media Ltd

Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi,C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved fromhttp://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf