The explosion of Twitter has taught the world to microblog. It is the spot for instantaneous news reports. Revolutions have been reported on Twitter freely. When the ground shook here at ISM, we immediately checked on Twitter to find reports of the east coast earthquake being felt from North Carolina to Toronto seconds after it happened.
Even more than news, Twitter is a source for connections. Thanks to the hashtag (#), you can get in a conversation about education, find numerous helpful resources, learn the best entities to follow, and much more. Essentially the hashtag is a sort mechanism.
“It makes it easy for people to monitor what’s happening in the conversation rather than having to try to guess what topics you should search for,” according to The A-Z Dictionary of Educational Twitter Hashtags” on Edudemic.com. “By having a conversation on Twitter using hashtags, you also make it easy for other Twitter users to join in.”
Edudemic has put together a list of the most popular hashtag conversations for educators; it is curated by Cybraryman, the Creative Education Blog out of the UK, tweetsmarter.com. and hashtags.org.
The most popular hashtag conversations are:
- #edchat – Education, worldwide (lots of US teachers). A really useful hashtag if you are interested in tweeting with a wide range of educators worldwide.
- #schools – Massively wide ranging but used far less than #edchat or #ukedchat
- #teaching – This hashtag seems to largely be used for jobseeking, FYI
- #lrnchat – Learning chat
- #TT – Teacher Tuesday where educators suggest others to follow
- #kinderchat – hashtag for discussing kindergarten-age children
- #EdChatIE – The educational hashtag for Ireland for all three levels
- #ukedchat – UK Education
- #ClavEd – The educational hashtag for French Speakers – Wednesdays at 12h(EST) 13h(ATL) 18h(Paris)
- #GlobalEd – Education with a global dimension
Edudemic not only lists popular hastags for technology, specific subjects, specific areas, and specific roles, but a full list of nearly all educational hashtags (390 of ‘em!). You will find it here.
Additional ISM resources of interest
Private School News Vol 10. No. 1 Teachers Use Twitter, Where Are All The Administrators?
Private School News Vol. 9 No. 9 Teachers Gone Viral
More resources for Consortium Gold Members
Ideas & Perspectives Vol. 35 No. 1 Faculty and Staff Use of Social Media: Sample Policy
