Now that you’re signed up on Twitter, it’s time to start thinking about who to follow in order to keep up with the world of education.
Content from accounts you follow will appear on your homepage or it can be accessed by clicking on the account via your following list. It is good to follow a wide variety of accounts in order to be informed by different types of sources.
Here are the types of accounts you may want to follow:
Educational organisations
Schools
Follow your school’s Twitter account.
You may also want to follow the accounts of schools in the local area in order to keep up with their news and events and to join in with their community
You can also follow the accounts of schools you have been affiliated with, e.g. schools you previously went to and your university Twitter account.
Friends, colleagues, and students
Follow your colleagues so that you can keep in touch and see what their educational goals and methods are. You can also follow friends and family members outside of your work but make sure that your public conversations remain formal and appropriate.
Follow your students or parents of students who are too young to use Twitter. Communicate with your students as you would in the classroom. Engage with students and parents on topics such as useful links, class work, reminders, and events. Ensure they are always on board with what is going on at school and in their studies.
Lecturers
Keep up to date with your lecturers in order to share ideas and gain advice and support. Your lecturers may also find it helpful to use your tweets as examples to show current students and trainee teachers. As your lecturers have years of experience and a high level of expertise, it would look good for your profile to retweet their tweets and sources in order to influence your followers.
Accounts linked to your area of expertise
If you are a secondary school teacher for example, it would be convenient to follow accounts that directly relate to your teaching interests.
For example, if you are an English teacher, there are so many great accounts to follow, which will provide you with excellent resources and could help inspire your teaching methods.
Educational news accounts
It is important that you stay informed with news on the education sector and to ensure that you gain a wide-ranging and reliable perspective of current affairs
Make sure you follow legitimate news sources (check the account has a blue tick). You can follow either general news accounts or education specific. These could include:
It is also a good idea to follow news accounts from your local area, as articles may concern your school more directly.
Miscellaneous users
Twitter can often become a rabbit hole which introduces you to various users and organisations when engaging with tweets and profiles. You can find new accounts to follow by seeing who your school, colleagues and friends follow and by exploring their profiles to see if they share informative and appealing content.
If you discover a profile via retweets, mutual connections or seeing who has replied to tweets, you are bound to find another profile which gives you valuable content and influence for your teaching.