Connected Educator Month: Follow These Educators!

Quite often you’ll see handy blog posts designed to help  teachers find good people to follow on twitter. These usually take the form of a top-ten list or something like that.

I thought about doing that in honor of Connected Educator Month. But when I get to thinking about whom to put on this list…how in the world do you do that? As soon as I think of 20, or 30, or 40 great people to follow, I think of 100 more. It’s nearly impossible to do.

But when you think about it, getting hooked on twitter can’t be done without a great group of people to follow. If you’re not following anyone…there’s no one to learn from. So step one for new twitter users has to be finding people to follow. And in this case, the more the merrier.

So here’s my 3 step plan for helping people decide who to follow on twitter. It doesn’t involve a list or a “Top Ten” or anything like that. And it’s not all-encompassing. I’m sure this method leaves people out. But it is easy and quick, two things you’ve gotta have if you want to help teachers learn something new.

1. Find an engaging educator to follow on twitter (For example, these guys).

2. On their twitter profile page (http://twitter.com/theirusername) click either the number that represents the people they’re following or the people they follow:

3. Take some time to scroll through this list, scan folks’ bios and start clicking away on those “Follow” buttons.

This method is far from perfect, but it will get you a lot of people to follow in a short amount of time. Your twitter page will fill with amazing resources and insight in no time flat. And, hopefully, you’ll be hooked.

The key, I think, is taking the time to help fellow educators see the value in twitter AND help them get set up. What better time to do this than Connected Educator Month?

So, all you connected educators out there. This week, make it your mission to help a fellow teacher get connected on twitter. Tell them about our 3 steps. Mentor them along the way. Encourage them. Support them. Retweet them! And help the movement to improve teaching and learning grow.

Special thanks to all of our followers. Perusing this list of your names made me realize what an amazing group you are and inspired this (and many, many other) posts.