How can the use of Twitter or other social networking tools help leaders support staff? How is this different from other methods?
Personally, I have found the use of Twitter and other social networking tools to be a great resource to support my colleagues and fellow educators. I am always discovering fantastic links with great ideas to support a wide spectrum of educational development. Staff members can access information on my twitter account, within my blog, in my Livebinder, or through my Delicious links to obtain resources, ideas, and materials to support their own teaching practices.
Within my own school board, there is a huge push to support mathematics, with math learning and math talks. I recently attended a workshop outlining some of the features of the Dreambox math application. It is not only a great tool to use to aid in the attribution and development of math concepts, but it also provides a wide variety of reports to assist teachers in assessing their students. The information I learned in this workshop I can easily pass off to my colleagues in my school through social media. Then can access a tweet from me, that would give them access to a powerpoint presentation, or the Google docs document that was shared with me during the workshop. This would give them instant access to the information I obtained, which would allow them to quickly and easily adapt the ideas and concepts within, into their own use of the Dreambox software.
Social Networking is different from other methods, simply because of the little amount of time it takes to share the information and learning. Previously, the learning that I obtained during this staff meeting would be later shared with my teaching partners at the staff meeting for the following month… that is, if there was time and room on the agenda! With social media, the information can be shared instantly, allowing teachers to adapt the concepts immediately, and thusly benefitting the students more promptly.
I do think that it has only been in the past couple of years that District leaders as well as teacher leaders are using and supporting social networking as a tool for learning. There are still many educators very apprehensive, however. As a leader yourself, how do balance PD with social media for those who are active and expect this tool and for those who want no part of it? Should the use of Social Media be non-negotiable for leaders in our districts? <-- tough question.
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