If it weren't for this class, I would have
never even considered opening a twitter account. I thought that it was all mindless chatter about celebrity gossip and the like.
Even when I began this mod, I was thinking "there is really no good way to ensure our students privacy and safety if we have them use twitter."
I hadn't thought of using it for professional development purposes!
And professional development is exactly what Russell Stanndard says we
should be using twitter for in his
article for Times Higher Education. He suggests "piggybacking" on the followers of some well-known 'tweeters' in your field, and thereby expanding your professional network on the site.
I have already found a boatload of people in the TEFL/ESL/TESOL field who post tweets containing links to interesting activity and lessons ideas, and it is really wondrous how simply clicking "follow" can give you access to so many ideas that you would otherwise have never encountered.
For me, however, this may be a curse rather than a blessing. It is overwhelming for me to have so many links and posts, that honestly I either get lost clicking on every link and losing track of what I am doing, or else I simply do not bother to look at all due to the sheer amount of information to sift through.
I suppose only time will tell if I can get over my trepidation and begin to use twitter in a productive way.
