Twitter for professional development

It’s really interesting seeing the number of schools that are purposefully working to help teachers learn how to capitalise on the ways in which Twitter can be used for professional development.  I am a huge champion of Twitter for CPD and I have run many sessions on how to get up and running and how you can use it for your own personalised professional development.

With lots of teachers looking for recommendations of who to follow I have created a new periodic table. This time my periodic table is one of educational tweeters to follow on Twitter.

It has been a pretty difficult process coming up with all of the people I wanted to include. Please do not think if I haven’t included you that your output isn’t good enough or that I don’t value what you do. There are a number of people I have worked with and connected with over the years that I would have loved to include, including some people I said I would include too, but haven’t. If you aren’t on there, I am sorry and I hope that you do not take it personally. It is not a popularity contest. My mission has been to share a number of quality accounts that teachers new to Twitter might like to follow to help develop their professional learning network (PLN). It has been difficult but I have attempted a balance of people on Twitter from my PLN across the following areas:

• Ideology
• Gender
• Nationality
• Leadership
• Ages taught
• BAME

If you feel there isn’t a broad enough diversity in there then I’m sorry you feel that way. I have tried to create a resource based upon great accounts that are worth a follow that would be helpful to someone new to Twitter. If you are going to engage with Twitter for your PD, your PLN should extend far beyond the relatively few accounts shown here.

Guidance

Using Twitter for your professional development isn’t just about finding others for ideas. I feel it is important to not only find your tribe to support what you do but find others who will challenge you, make you think and expand your perspectives. Twitter can very easily become an echo chamber and so the breadth and depth of accounts I’ve chosen to share should provide you with a broad and balanced spectrum of people to connect with or just learn from. If you are new to Twitter and don’t quite understand how it works, you might like to check out this resource called ‘Twitter for Teachers’.

I did try to contact all of the people on the table to seek permission for use of their avi. There was no easy way to do it. I tried to create a group DM to ask everyone and that failed as Twitter maxed out at 50 people in the DM group. A number of people on the table don’t follow me either so I couldn’t contact them other than publicly, which is what I am going to do with everyone now. If you would prefer not to be on the table, please let me know. For clarity, there is no categorisation and the position of different people is entirely ad hoc.

It’s not ‘just a list’

For those that would call it ‘just a list’, I would like to explain the process of how I made it.

1. The first step was to think of the 82 people I thought should be included. This took a while to do although isn’t something I worked on solidly – I added to the names over time and asked people on Twitter for their thoughts and ideas. I spoke with close friends on Twitter too and sought guidance and advice from a number of sources.
2. I then created a template in Photoshop
3. I created each blue icon and made them identical in terms of colour, size, spacing, arrangement
4. I then typed out each name ensuring consistency of alignment and size
5. I then saved the blank table and opened it in Keynote
6. I then downloaded the avi of each person
7. I created a circle on each of the different icons for the avi to sit in
8. I added each avi to the circle so that the circle shape masked the avis into circular images
9. I finished off by ensuring the consistency of layout and design and now I’m sharing it with you 🙂

You write a list to go shopping. You write a list of things you want to do. I’d hope you’d see that this and work that others share too is a bit more than ‘just a list’. 😀

I hope you find this periodic table useful. If you’d like to share it on Twitter yourself, please click the link below.

If social media for CPD or for your school is something high on your agenda, I can help with that. Please get in touch via my contact form if you would like to explore this opportunity with me.

If you are sharing the table, please respect my creative commons license on my work. You can download a high quality version of the table here.

To view all of my resources on Twitter you might like to check this link too.

Updated

I have put the table on to ThingLink in order to make the difference avis clickable. Simply hover over the image below and click on someone in order to see their account and follow them, should you wish.

Thanks!