Hello to #educ3624 students who are reading this and to anyone else reading. I was in your position 2 years ago, I am now in my first year of teaching.

Twitter Handle: @jessottewell

CONNECTING
Firstly twitter has helped me make connections with educators in the ‘real world’. While at uni nothing is more beneficial is to gain advice from your future colleagues and current issues. I have made many connections with educators from around the world. Some are still and will most likely always will be an educator I can connect with online while others I am meeting in person and continuing to build that connection. I gained a ‘real world’ in site into the profession while still at uni, and I will say being connected can help your job prospects in the future. It certainly helped me.

# Hash tags are a great way to follow specific discussions. Conferences or professional training days commonly have their own hashtag to their attendees to use. If you can’t attend a specific conference you can follow along. Free PD! plus free PD anytime you want! Share and find resources, ideas, inspiration and more. Twitter can be great for seeking advice, don’t forget to give advice as well though 🙂 shows you are willing to help. Very important in this profession.

I ALREADY HAVE FACEBOOK THOUGH
That is fine. Facebook can also be another great social media platform to connect with educators. I have created my own pages ‘Teachers Inspire‘. I also follow a large variety of pages which share advice and resources. While I follow education related pages and I use this platform for teaching purposes Facebook is mainly personal for me. What I do on the weekend, sharing fun things and yes of course sharing those selfies 🙂

TWITTER
I use this platform mainly for education purposes. I do share personal things every now and again also, this is because I am not a robotic teacher and i am a person, it doesn’t hurt to share fun personal things just to remind people you are human 🙂
Now what about your twitter handle or name and the profile picture. I am sure if you are already on facebook you have your name and a photo of you for your profile so why not twitter. If you are worried about privacy online don’t share out your phone number, address those very private details.
As for using your name as your twitter handle. My name is Jessica Ottewell and my twitter handle is @jessottewell.
I have my name as my handle because I want people to recognise me in the digital world, if I had a random twitter handle such as @jo_27-1991 not only is it hard to remember when you want to mention someone it tells other tweeters nothing about that individual either.

IN THE CLASSROOM
I use twitter in my classroom with my students. We are able to talk to students/teachers from other schools, locally and world wide. We share out student blog posts/student work through twitter so students get feedback.comments from a wider audience. A student was recently able to connect with one of his favourite authors and was able to ask him questions – A real connection. How else could you achieve this?!
There is so much more you can use twitter for in the classroom. It is a great online tool to use with your class.

Class Twitter: @ssinspire
Class Blog: studentsinspire.edublogs.org (Includes links to student blogs)

ONLINE SAFETY
A big topic in schools atm. Of course it is very important, especially with the older years as they are most likely to be using tools such a twitter and/or facebook. If you allow students to use twitter in the classroom you will have to have explicit lessons and discussions with your students. even if you don’t plan on using it in the classroom students will be using social media platforms so it is important to have those conversations about cyber bullying and what information is safe to share online.

I hope that has helped you understand twitter a bit more.
Please comment below if you have any other questions or contact me on twitter 🙂

Jess