This document discusses several educators that are influential on Twitter: - Eric Sheninger tweets about student growth and collaboration tools for the classroom. - Dave Martin tweets words of motivation for educators and shares math classroom activities. - Michael Zimmer shares technology resources and tips for integrating tools like Instagram into lessons. - An educational technology class tweets about using social media responsibly and connecting with students. - Todd Whitaker tweets inspirational quotes and connects with readers about his philosophy of education.

1. Eric Sheninger is a great educator to follow on Twitter because he tweets about a variety
of issues. In this particular post he blogs about personal student growth vs. student academic
growth, and how standardized tests can’t reflect all the hard work those educators put into that
student. He also tweeted about whiteboard tables, which I instantly swooned for. I can’t begin to
imagine how great that would be for a math class. The collaboration potential alone would be
phenomenal, and they were cheap to make too! Mr. Sheninger seems very accessible; he’s
constantly responding to tweets from students and other educators. I think he uses Twitter the
best; he uses Twitter as a communication, collaboration, and sharing vehicle.
Dave Martin is a great educator to follow for his motivational tweets. He constantly sends
out a stream of tweets motivating educators to remember that the students come first. Also, as
you can see from the picture, he tweets about ideas and activities for math classrooms. As a
future math teacher I enjoy looking at the activities he uses in the classroom. This tweet is a link
to his blog describing how he re-structured his whole Calculus class to ensure every student had
an equal opportunity to succeed. He realized his previous method was “weed[ing] out the weak”
and not supporting the diverse learning styles of his students. I love that he reminded me that
students need time for trial and error and revision. So now, he uses an assessment to determine
that the student can demonstrate the basic skills covered, and if not, the student follows a
revision process. After the students have been tested for basic knowledge, they domonstate
applications by creating a project. It’s an interesting read, and fascinating concept. Mr. Martin

2. incorporated 21st
century education skills into his curriculum and allowed his students to create
their own learning.
Michael Zimmer is the tech and tech integration guy of Twitter. In this post, he is sharing
a class project where students follow a prompt each day to photograph various math concepts.
Though this is a third grade class,this could be a great idea to integrate Instagram into the
secondary classroom, especially Geometry class. I could use this idea in my own Unit Plan as
well. Michael Zimmer shares free technology resources for educators of all grade levels. Since
I’ll be a first year teacher soon, classroom mangement is in the forefront of my mind. I was
shocked to find a tweet by Mr. Zimmer sharing a visual noise meter that can be used as real-time
student feedback. A teacher can display the meter and show students how loud they talk, and set
an appropriate noise range for any given activity. He also shares information, tips, and tricks for
educators to learn technology. It’s very helpful that he takes requests from his followers, and
tweets his findings and suggestions.
I followed my educational technology class by Dr. Harold Blanco on Twitter. His class
Twitter shared many links of ways educators are integrating technology into their classroom and
curriculum. The class twitter is a great advocate for using social media to connect with students,
and privatizing teachers’ personal social media. The class Twitter shared many articles
describing how to be smart while using social media with students: like having parents sign
waivers that photos of their children can be published. This Twitter feed emphasized the
importance of student privacy.

3. Lastly, I followed Todd Whitaker, an educational and inspirational author with a large
presence on Twitter. One of my education professors suggested some good education books to
read, and he mentioned a couple books by Todd Whitaker. On a whim, I decided to see if the
author had a Twitter, and he did. He likes to tweet inspirational quotes and pictures. Most of his
traffic on Twitter is connecting with his readers. His readers tweet at him about how they use his
philosophy in their classroom, or how they were reminded of passages in his books. Here is a
great tweet he shared about connecting with difficult students. The link explains why these
students need a teacher-student relationship to succeed in the classroom. Some of his other
tweets include: 5 ways to help students with Autism succeed in the classroom, 10 steps for
avoiding teacher burnout, and 3 ways to use QR codes to connect School and Home. I intend to
read a couple of his books this summer and join the chat.