This is a tough one for me. I’ll start off by saying that I am not an active Twitter user; in fact, I had to fire up my account from the ashes, which was untouched and unused, since my last Ed. Tech. class. I suppose my greatest challenge with this platform is that it is simply not an integral or routine part of my role as an educator. That being said, I know there is value in actively using Twitter to seek out and share resources, learn, and stay up to date with best practices, and I am giving it a fair shot this week to convince me that it’s truly something I’m missing out on.

I wonder what an active Twitter user, fully immersed in the culture of sharing and consuming digital content on the regular, would want to say to me in defense of their standpoint (if this is you, I’d love to hear a few counter-points to my resistance)

Here are some questions I have that might contribute to my hesitancy:

1. Can Twitter make me a better teacher? What is it about this platform in particular that is better than other methods and places of consuming and sharing information?
2. I already feel like there’s not enough time in the day to juggle work, family, personal well-being and sleep, so is making room for regular tweeting worth it?
3. Echo chambers always seem to come up as a challenging issue in online social spaces; how would Twitter be any different, as I would ultimately choose to follow the types of accounts and users that align with values and beliefs I already have? Isn’t this something we should be trying to avoid doing?
4. What if it’s simply just not for me? Does not having a Twitter account move me down a notch on the teacher greatness scale? And if so, why?

I’m not trying to be cheeky with any of these questions. I’m genuinely curious about the answers I might receive and if they would help push me toward embracing Twitter as a vital educational tool.

Currently, I simply just don’t use Twitter much! However, I do use Instagram regularly, and follow educational accounts such as the.unteachables and primarilyjoyful. I suppose that with other social media platforms, such as Pinterest, and regular conversations and interactions with teacher friends and colleagues, my professional learning network isn’t lacking enough to need to add something new.

In the spirit of learning new things, I started up my account, updated my profile information, and began following a number of users from this article that Katia shared with us earlier in the course. I also starting following other accounts that were recommended based off of the ones I was recently clicking to follow.

Over the course of the week, I made it to 40 accounts I am following (which is a lot considering I think I had below 10 prior to this). I’ve added three tweets and spent time browsing the tweets and retweets of others, curious of what I might stumble across.

As a bit of a side note, if I did start using Twitter more, I don’t think I would ever be someone who tweets a lot. I don’t share often on any of the other social media platforms I use regularly, so suddenly tweeting and retweeting things daily would feel pretty uncomfortable for me.

During my time using Twitter, I was happy to realize that it really can be a one-stop shop for staying in the loop with best practices in education, new and top tech ideas, resources, PD opportunities, and even some humour sprinkled in to add some comic relief to the madness and insanity that our jobs can be sometimes.

I think that the more time I would spend using Twitter, the more I’d come to value it and regularly use it in my teaching (and learning). It would certainly be a slow build, as I wouldn’t jump right in to tweeting multiple times a day and suddenly following 500 accounts. As I wrap up this school year with my current class of grade 7s, and soon begin another year of maternity leave, I’m thinking about how I can still continue to grow and get better. Perhaps Twitter is one of the ways I can do this.