Getting Started on Twitter - Hashtags and Who to Follow

It's so great to see so many great educators beginning their Twitter journey. I remember back to my beginning and not really knowing where to start, how to interact or who to follow. I feel like I have finally come to a point in the development of my online Professional Learning Network (PLN) that I can impart some good advice on how to make things work for you. I wanted this post to not only be a list of the top educators to follow on Twitter but I wanted to share how I developed my following and some great hashtags to follow.

I will admit, all my original posts were all about trying to get a 'feel' for Twitter and in truth, it took me a long time to actually understand what the hell was happening there. I fell off the Twitter bandwagon a few times and then at the beginning of 2018 I really kicked it up a gear. I was in a brand new position with no one in my school to help me, so I had to reach out.

I began to share what I was doing in my STEAM class; just snippets with pictures and thoughts and then the occasional video. From there, I started to converse with other educators who liked what I was posting and then I started to discover the importance of hashtags. I knew they were powerful but I struggled to work out what was current and what was worth me looking at.

What I found was that the more I had conversations with people, the more people would reach out to me. I began to not just 'like' things that were great but I retweeted them , sometimes with a comment and sometimes without. I found that I could add different hashtags to my retweets which helped the reach of the posts original author but also created even more conversations. If you're new to Twitter, this is where I recommend you to start - just retweeting and commenting.

With hashtags, you will quickly learn which are the most powerful and what you prefer to look at. There are so many popular education based hashtags but these are my favourite:

#primarySTEMchat

#aussieED

#EveryoneCanCreate

#TLAPdownunder

#appleEDUchat

#STEMed

#whatisschool

#shakeuplearning

#pstchat

#asiaED

Let me know some of your favourites once you are settled in to Twitter.

Now, who should you follow? I follow a lot of brilliant educators (too many for one blog post) but the below list is made up of people that I have either connected with on a regular basis and developed a great professional relationship with or people that I think offer a lot to teachers in what they post. I probably could have made a Top 200 list but thought I would start with 50, so in no particular order:

@rachaellehr @standouted @mrkempnz @kcasw1 @madformaple @robkellytweets @martinezgeek @harkinworld @lv2teachNtravel @MrBlowers @yeates_mark @edTechEvans @ShakeUpLearning @MrMattHeinrich @_ehughes_ @SamLeah10	@autismplusmath @jedjnr @skymazef3 @lindamciver @ATorrens84 @levi_allison42 @MRsalakas @BentleyJuliette @Angie8881 @Paulhamilton8 @AdamHillEDU @stuartkellynz @XpatEducator @NicolaO_B @STEAMuptheClsrm @emma_nemer @NZWaikato @dothinkeducate	@steven_kolber @raffteachedu @MrErdoganEDU @phil_carew @cpola17 @HostBrian @misskyritsis @MrJ_Wigg @mySTEMclassroom @BecWest81 @mrkpyp @claireseldon_ed @feeschmee @larubain @cultofpedagogy @MatthewXJoseph

The one thing I always tell teachers about developing Twitter PLNs is that it is such a great, friendly and vibrant community. People are always there to reach out to lend a hand and you will find it a vastly different space to any other social media platforms in the way people interact. Give it a go and let me know about your journey. I love to hear others' stories.