During the design and development of the workshop programme I contacted my Twitter PLN (Personal Learning Network) and asked them to contribute one way in which Twitter has helped them professionally.
The feedback we received within 15 minutes of the request for comments can be seen here: RESULTS. Ultimately, you can take control of your professional development by engaging in discussions, debates, training and development in areas that YOU are interested in personally, which may (or may not) also help you professionally.

As we continued to delve further and find out about other reasons to ‘Tweet’, other reasons to use Twitter were shared with us; REASONS. There is one word of warning though – you ‘get out of Twitter what you put in’, by this we mean it’s not a ‘quick fix’ and it may take a while for you to start following the right people. In the words of one of my Twitter PLN: “Twitter… serendipity in action… plus lots of rubbish! You have to filter but if you do you find gold!“.

So in summary – using Twitter gives you access to a huge network of like-minded people willing to share ideas, resources and advice with from across the world. Often people start out following those users with the same outlook on certain issues, but often end up also following users with completely different outlooks – that’s what has made Twitter so successful over the last 5 years! Go on give it a go.

Other information you may find interesting!
Reasons People Don’t Use Twitter
The Official Twitter Guide

The award recognises the impact of the bespoke training programme, developed in partnership with Phoenix Education, designed to ensure that supply teachers benefit from high quality training workshops and receive the same level of career development support as they would in a permanent post in a school. The challenge that faced Phoenix Education was to provide a range of workshops on key topics such as Lesson Planning, Using New Technologies in the Classroom, Special Educational Needs and Behaviour Management that would meet the needs of all of the teachers involved. The workshops have been positively received by all those attending and new workshops for 2010-11 are currently under development.

Having won the regional title, Education Resourcing is now in the running for the national award in its category, as well as the chance to collect the Award for Outstanding Business Achievement. We wish them the best of luck.

Read the article in full by clicking here

A recent survey indicated that over 80 per cent of those who responded had a social networking account of some sort and one-third of those people used social networking to communicate with peers and students alike.  Furthermore, those who taught online were statistically more likely to use social media for professional purposes as well.  It’s obvious that educators know about social networking, but as you can see, only a third of the respondents here used social networking to communicate with students.  Even if they’re not using social media to chat with students, it doesn’t mean that teachers aren’t using these tools in class.

Most educators use blogs, podcasts, video, and even wikis as part of their courses.  This is a smart thing to do.  Most students are already used to watching and listening to these media for other purposes, so it only makes sense to do the same in class.  It is important to note that in higher education, professors in the social sciences or humanities usually make greater use of social media than those in mathematics, science or business.  This actually makes sense, because social science and the humanities are less rigid, encourage discussion and elicit varying opinions, as opposed to maths or science, which are fairly cut-and-dry in their approach. However, some subjects such as design & technology are now beginning to move towards encouraging students to develop online blogs to store their coursework portfolios. The flexibility that is provided by these applications means that students can set up individual pages linked to assignments, where video footage, photos and research can all be uploaded and viewed. The benefits are obvious; all types of different medium can be uploaded, password protected and accessed through the web. Students are able to work on their blogs from home and can be as creative as they like to make their blogs personal, as well as providing the flexibility for schools to even create set templates for students to use.

Faculty members who do most of their teaching online are invariably the heaviest users of social media in the classroom.  Since their classrooms are virtual, they have very little, if any, face to face time with their students.  Therefore, to supplement the material taught, these educators use videos, blogs, and other such social media to enhance their teaching.  It shows that educators are definitely aware of social media and are looking for various ways to utilise these tools as part of their curriculum.

How are you using social media to enhance teaching and learning for yoiur students? What’s been extremely successful? What should be avoided at all costs?

Education Resourcing has launched a new training programme, in partnership with Phoenix Education, to help supply teachers receive the same level of career development support as they would in a permanent post in a school.

This is the first programme of its kind to be offered by a teacher training agency anywhere in the UK, and will enable supply teachers to maintain the levels of development required of them should they apply for a contract or permanent post at a later date.

Education Resourcing Ltd – New training helps supply teachers stay ahead of the class

Here are some social media statistics from http://econsultancy.com/blog:

• Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours… A considerable increase from the previous 120m.
• Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. It’s still a fair increase from the estimated 6-10m global users from a few months ago.
• LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. This means an increase of around 1m members month-on-month since July/August last year.
• Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m… meaning around a 40% increase of users in less than half a year.

Other more interesting facts from http://socialmediaexaminer.com:

The data shows that nearly 72% of young adults and teens use social networking sites, compared to 40% of adults 30 and older.

71% of the younger generation actively maintain a Facebook profile and 75% of the older generation maintain one as well.
So the question we need to ask ourselves is HOW do we harness this technology to develop staff skills and transform learning?

Personally I believe that you need to start small, embed good practice and ensure that what you’re doing has value – otherwise you end up implementing something for the sake of it, with no real point which staff pick up on and value even less! For staff development I would start by using Twitter to set up a PLN (Personal Learning Network) either within a school, across a group of departments or within a Local Authority for a targeted group of staff. This way you’ll be able to engage staff by providing them access to resources, ideas and discussions with like-minded colleagues. Once staff can see ‘what’s in it for them?’ then they are more keen to contribute and get involved.

This is where I’ve had the most success but I would welcome your comments about the successes you’ve had in introducing Twitter, Facebook et al into the CPD programmes within your organisation….