Our WA STEM grant work is coming to an end. My Math and Science middle and high school PLC team has been immersing themselves in the world of social networking by blogging and tweeting for the past year. For some it’s been toe dipping that is becoming a walk up to the hip while other have jumped right in.
For those who have jumped in we’ve had a number or great blogs to read and tweets and retweets are blazing through the twitterverse. It’s been great.
For those who are still dipping toes we helped them wade in a little deeper at our January 5th meeting. I shared a plan with them that I think will work quite well.
- Write a few blogs. Just remember to write a blog when you are dealing with something or just need to reflect on something.
- While you are getting a few posts on your blog start following people on Twitter. Here is a list of Math and Science educators who tweet and blog that you can follow. I got these from CybraryMan’s website.
- Make sure your twitter bio includes something about you, your interests and what you teach or what your job entails. That way you will get people interested in things you’re interested in will follow you.
- Since you will be starting out with only a few followers on Twitter, retweet (RT) everything you find interesting. By sharing through RT’s you are exposing yourself to the followers of those you RT. By following people and RT’ing you will steadily gain more followers yourself.
- Once you have a good number of followers start sharing your blog posts through Twitter. Ask for help from those with lots of followers to RT your blog post tweet.
- Persevere in this and soon you’ll have people who read your blog, maybe even regularly, and you’ll have a nice network of educators on Twitter to learn from and to share with. This is when it really starts getting good.
- If you want to, then attend a Twitter chat or just join in on Twitter conversations with people you follow. A couple of our members already join other types of online discussions so they’re good already.
This grant project is coming along very well. Of the six members besides myself two members have taken off by jumping in writing blogs and tweeting. One has waded in waist deep and has some blogs going and has been tweeting even more. Another has a class blog and is going to get her personal blog going. She has started tweeting recently as well. The final two are slowly moving past their toe dipping and I expect to see them wade in now. The real test of this grant’s outcomes will be whether the aforementioned blogs and Twitter accounts are used after our last meeting, which will be scheduled for late January or early February.
Our January 5th meeting went very well. Here’s a five minute snapshot of that three hour session:
