• Phew. Permalink / 301 issues finally resolved. It took 4 different plugins before I found one that worked! yoast.com helped! #wordpress #
• RT @futurelabedu: New Futurelab handbook: Curriculum and teaching innovation http://bit.ly/UGbJ #
• Impressed with this Geography USA field trip blog, well done Berkhamsted geographers! http://bit.ly/z0ho #
• Six tips for getting a promotion in school: http://bit.ly/YklL #
• Add your tips for getting promoted in school: http://bit.ly/YklL #
• When it comes to career progression, do you take the moral high ground or do whatever is necessary? Join the debate http://bit.ly/YklL #
• RT @deakaz: RT @stejules Top 13 Twitter Don’ts - Features by PC Magazine http://tinyurl.com/ctrmz9 #

• I like @suewaters work on Twitter for Teachers - what a great resource! http://bit.ly/3qF4ci #
• Apologies for error earlier. Great pdf about Twitter for Teachers is written by @lasic! http://bit.ly/3qF4ci #
• Hurrah for finally getting my new permalink structure sorted with 301 redirect thingy! Don’t really understand it, but it seems to work! #
• Spoke too soon. Blog now in some sort of purgatory and never quite properly loads. Grr. #
• “OSS in schools: what school leaders should know” Want to be part of the article? @ me to get involved. Please RT #

Twitter Handbook for Teachers (link to pdf download)

Tomaz Lasic has written this really useful document, explaining to teachers how to get started with using Twitter. It has an answer ready for the sceptics at every stage! It also has my Nine Reasons post incorporated into it. You can find Tomaz on Twitter too.

Sue Waters also has a fantastic wiki which gives a lot of information about using Twitter and is well worth a visit, and you can follow her on Twitter.

Thanks very much!

I am a Fast Track Teacher on my final year in the programme. I am currently Faculty Leader for MFL at Westfield Community College in Watford, and aiming for my first senior leadership post.

For the past year I have been using Twitter to develop my Personal Learning Network. I have found that in combination with my blog, Twitter is a fantastic tool for engaging with other professionals around the world involved in education.

On Sunday 15^th March, an article about school reform in the Sunday Times caught my eye. I wrote a response to it on my blog, and shared the post with my followers on Twitter. Since Jim Knight, the Minister for Schools is a Twitter user; I sent him the link to my blog asking for his comments. I didn’t imagine he would respond, but that afternoon we exchanged ideas about what the English education system needed in order to move forwards. To read the article and the post, click here.

Blogging and using Twitter have flattened hierarchies for me in a fantastic way: I network every day with senior leaders, politicians, journalists and international educationalists. As an example, in the past couple of weeks, I have also been discussing digital literacy with the Principal at Berkhamsted School, after reading a really interesting post on his blog. To read the exchange, click here.

The constant drip-feed of new ideas and inspiration that Twitter provides has given me a real edge at school and means I can stay right on the pulse of educational change. I would really recommend it to any aspiring senior leaders to use this tool to access some of the great thinking and innovation that is going on in the world of education, from your doorstep to the other side of the world.

To follow me on Twitter, go to http://www.twitter.com/mrslwalker

*This post was reinstated after it got lost in the ether when my blog was updated.*

• Blown away by what Google Webmaster tools can do. I only discovered today that there are 2252 external links out there to my Twitter post! #
• Big blog rebuild and declutter underway. Getting there, what do you think so far? http://mrslwalker.com #
• I know the old theme was gorgeous but it just didn’t work… shame really! #

Looking for a vibrant new Wordpress.org theme? Look no further!

I have done a serious trawl for the most creative, interesting and appealing Wordpress themes I could find. My taste tends toward the bright, cheery and vibrant; so if lots of black is your thing, or you just love plain blue boxes you might want to move right along!

1. Rock-Kitty.net

This is a fantastic collection of themes. Whilst the organisation of themes is not as slick as some other sites, there is a varied collection of themes here that can easily be previewed and downloaded. The vast majority are free, but licensing does vary.

2. Wordpress themes

There is a really big collection of themes here. I think that a lot of them are pretty run-of-the-mill themes with blue boxes at the top and rounded corners. However, do a little digging and you will find some real gems!

3. Top WP Themes

This site was a great find. Themes are categorised really usefully (so you can search Adsense-ready themes, or designer) and there is some beautiful work.

4. BlogOh!Blog

This was my favourite site for really clean, simple designs. What’s more: the ‘Salient Features of this design’ detail really helps users find exactly what they are looking for.

5. Design Disease

These guys don’t have an enormous swathe of themes, but that doesn’t matter. There are eight themes here that are beautifully designed and deserve a look!

6. Six Revisions

This compilation list of 50 beautiful themes has been doing the rounds since last November, but it’s still tough to beat. It’s where I found my current theme, Notepad Chaos.

If you find a new theme that you love, or perhaps another great site for the list, why not post a link in the comments?

What’s the point of Twitter? Why should educators get involved? What difference does using Twitter make?

Here are some answers that you might like to share.

1. Together we’re better

Teaching can be a lonely business. In a school where lessons are long and lunchtimes are short, not enough conversations between teachers I work with are about learning. We simply don’t have time. Twitter can be like a virtual staffroom for me, which I can step into when it suits me: in the queue at the supermarket or waiting for for the kettle to boil. I know that within seconds I can access a stream of links, ideas, opinion and resources from a hand-picked selection of global professionals.

2. Global or local: you choose

Whilst some Twitter users will not tolerate many overtly egotistical self-publicisers (some celebrities have come under fire for using the service just to broadcast banalities to their flocks of fans), there is no doubt that Twitter users have the potential to reach very large international audiences. In educational terms this is a real eye-opener: before using Twitter I had only limited understanding of educational systems and practices in countries like Australia and the US. It’s now possible for me to actively compare what’s happening in schools in my county with others on different continents. GPS-enabled devices like iPhones and the advanced web search facility allow searches which tell you what people are tweeting within a certain distance of a location, so if the other side of the world isn’t your bag, you can stick with your own patch.

3. Self-awareness and reflective practice

Excellent teachers reflect on what they are doing in their schools and look at what is going well in order to maintain and develop it, and what needs improvement in order to make it better. Teachers on Twitter share these reflections and both support and challenge each other. Reading about other educators’ experiences has made me question my own practice on a number of occasions, and whilst the resulting changes may only be incremental they are nonetheless important steps in the journey to improvement.

4. Ideas workshop and sounding board

Twitter is a great medium for sharing ideas and getting instant feedback. Its speed and instanteity means you can gather a range of opinions and constructive criticism within minutes; which can help enormously whether you are planning a learning experience, writing a policy or putting a job application together. Just this week, Doug Belshaw (@dajbelshaw) shared the experience of preparing for a job interview and used Twitter during interview to demonstrate the intellectual and professional clout of his impressive network.

As a further example, I tweeted whilst writing this post:

Within minutes various kind followers had responded with suggestions, including:

Whilst Twitter users do not have to use it synchronously like instant messanging software, the tool does lend itself well to quick responses.

5. Newsroom and innovation showcase

Sitting down with a newspaper is not a luxury I have the time to enjoy every day. Twitter helps me stay up to date on news and current affairs, as well as on the latest developments in my areas of interest:  school leadership, technology and languages. By following leading individuals and organisations, Twitter users can stay right at the bleeding edge of innovation and creativity, and literally be among the first to know when a new product is launched, article is published or opinion is voiced.

Whilst very innovative folk, teachers equally spend far too much time reinventing the wheel. Twitter helps me to be smarter about my work by sharing resources, ideas, training materials and policies with other schools. Just this week I am putting together a policy recommendation for staff at my school about ensuring their personal details on Facebook are secure. Several colleagues (including Alex Blagona @blagona and Sacha Van Straten @svanstraten) have been kind enough to share work they had already done in this area. I no longer have to start from scratch and will share my finished policy with any educators who would like it. It’s a bit like the principle of  ‘paying it forward’ on a big scale.

6. Professional development and critical friends

One of the best things about training days is the break out time between sessions, when teachers can get together to talk about what they are working on or struggling with. Twitter enables me to have that kind of powerful networking capacity with me all the time. It’s just a matter of finding the right people to follow. As @melaniemcbride said:

“Following smart people on Twitter is like a mental shot of expresso”

Since cash for cover is not always readily available, days out on expensive courses can’t be a regular thing for most teachers. I love to have access to learning on tap through Twitter as it doesn’t require large chunks of my day, or any financial outlay in order to have an impact. Twitter is also a source of healthy debate, and I have learned that if I am going to make a point I can’t be halfhearted about it; as there will be people who disagree! I have grown in confidence when it comes to my own convictions, and now take that back with me into school.

7. Quality-assured searching

I trust the people I follow. I hone and develop the list of people whose insights I value. Drew Buddie (@digitalmaverick) has mentioned several times that he believes his network to be more powerful than Google, and I am beginning to see why. Once your Twitter network grows past a critical mass, you can ask them detailed questions and get higher quality information back than a bog-standard Google search would generally provide, with the inbuilt assurance that it is a respected member of your network providing the information. On a broader scale, Twitter searching provides information about time-linked trending topics that Google cannot.

8. Communicate, communicate, communicate

Expressing yourself in 140 characters is a great discipline. I have become better at saying what needs to be said in my professional communications with less waffle and padding, and I refuse as far as possible to use txtspk. I previously read somewhere that every professional email could in theory be written in just five sentences. That seems luxuriously long!

9. Getting with the times has never been so easy!

There is no good reason why teachers shouldn’t stick with the times, engage with the technology and keep up with the kids. We need to be able to speak the same language and inhabit the same communities (both real and virtual) as our students in order to motivate them and relate to them. Twitter is anything but complicated! You simply visit Twitter.com and create your account. A little light searching using key words for your areas of interest will soon yield a list of interesting people to follow. There are plenty of websites offering advice on getting started and how to avoid a few common beginners’ faux-pas.

Remember, your experience on Twitter is only as high quality as the people who you follow and the information you share.

Your biggest challenge is likely to be getting the twitter.com unblocked on your school network if your main usage will be at school. Personally I find that having Twitter on my iPhone is enough most of the time. I then forward interesting links to my email inbox to look at in detail from my desk.

I hope this piece helps get more teachers involved in using Twitter. Do send it to your teams at school and all those people who don’t quite understand what it’s all about yet. I’m increasingly passionnate about it: Twitter is a very simple tool that allows me to connect with an amazingly clever, resourceful and innovative bunch of people who never fail to inspire and motivate me. Thanks guys!

Swift Kick Central.

What an amazing collection of inspirational EdTech material!

Thanks to Christine Morris for sharing it.