Teachers are using Twitter for grassroots professional development by sharing ideas and resources to grow as educators. A survey found most teachers follow others outside their school and use Twitter daily to regularly to find new concepts from experts in their field. Analysis of tweets found over half were sharing resources and about a third were responses to other users. While some have privacy concerns for students, teachers view Twitter as a way to model appropriate online behavior and provide real-world learning experiences with technology. School policies can limit teachers' use of social media as a professional resource, so effective guidelines are needed that don't completely ban these tools.

1. Grassroots Professional Development: How
Teachers Use Twitter
Andrea Forte, Melissa Humphreys, Thomas Park
Article Review retrieved from:
http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM12/paper/viewFile/4585/4973

2. Social Network Sites & Grassroots Professional
Development
● Teachers participate in professional
development via social networking to share
ideas and grow as a teacher.
● The benefits of social networking depend on
the needs of the teacher.

3. Social Network Sites & Grassroots Professional
Development
● Teachers join social networking sites for
various reasons. These include:
o Social pressure
o Access to experts in their field
o Resources for new concepts

4. Social Network Sites & Grassroots Professional
Development
● Teachers who might otherwise be isolated
have access to an open network.
o New teachers
o Content based teachers
● Teachers can use technology like the
following to help grow professionally:
o Wikis
o Blogs
o Twitter

5. Social Network Sites & Grassroots Professional
Development
● The questions asked by this article include:
o How are things like Twitter being used by teachers?
o What kind of impact do they have on their teaching?

6. Methods:
- Used Twitter to recruit participants
- Conducted telephone interview with eight of the recruited
participants
- Analyzed 2,000 tweets of educators and hashtags
Purpose- Understand variety of educator content is on
Twitter

7. Survey:
Step 1- Broadcasted survey on Twitter using
#edtech and #edchat. Educators retweeted.
Results: Out of 1,549 clicks, 69 educators
began the survey, and 37 completed it. All K-
12+ were represented in the participants.

8. Survey Analysis:
- 78% participants have used Twitter for at least a year.
- 78% (different subset) used Twitter continuously or
several times a day.
- 63% work in public education
- 62% have Master’s degrees
- Average years taught: 13.5

9. Survey Analysis Continued:
- Number of followers ranged 5-1,500
- Average number of followers on Twitter: 334
- 32% of participants have multiple Twitter accounts
- 75% reported having a personal account
- 25% reported using multiple accounts as strictly
professional.

10. Four Findings
● How teacher’s positions can be affected by Twitter
● Educational tweets, and what educators do with that
information
● Describe the educators’ outlook on how to serve
students and what their concerns about social media
are
● How “organizational cultures” as well as policies can
affect educators’ efforts. How appropriate tools are used
for educational use and professional development.

11. Finding 1
As a result of surveys conducted, teachers
using Twitter reported that they followed and
were followed primarily by educators outside of
their immediate school building.

12. Explanations For Finding 1
● Larger potential for connections due to
greater number of teachers outside of local
teaching community
● Networking building for educators
● Valuable resources and information
● Creates a “personal learning network”

13. Finding 2: What Tweeting Teachers
Hear and What They Do With That
Information
Many teachers viewed Twitter as a new idea
source and a way to learn about educational
technologies.
If teachers follow smart people and engage
with them, teachers can learn great amounts.

14. Findings
Content analysis of Twitter content showed
54% of #edchat were coded as resource
sharing.
About 25% of tweets from educators’ accounts
included resources.
30% of tweets from educators involved
response to others.

15. Twitter Teachers
Most non-educator Twitter users are
“meformers” people who often include
personal details rather than requesting or
responding.
Only about 2.5% of educators’ tweets contain
personal information.
Requesting information and responding to
others shows teachers engage in discussion

16. Parental Concerns
Some parents were not open to their students
participating in Twitter due to the outdated idea
that it is all personal information, “meformers”
Teachers appear to use Twitter professionally
not as “meformers” but rather to “inform” their
students and peers.

17. Privacy and Safety Concerns
● lack of digital citizenship
o supervising young students online behaviors
● creating safe spaces for students
o predator threats
o inappropriate language

18. Benefits of Social Media
● modeling and supervising appropriate online
behaviors
● real world application, productive online
collaborators
● public exposure and recognition

19. Policies and Barriers
School policies and attitudes toward social
media and other uses of technology in the
classroom can be barriers and a source of
frustration.

20. Policies and Barriers
Most teachers view social media as an online
resource however they recognize the need for
the creation of good policies.

21. Policies and Barriers
Often teachers feel it necessary to educate
administrators about social media use. A blind
policy that completely bans social media use
does not work because the kids will always find
a way around it and the students need
guidance and learning experiences with social
media.

22. EDA530-MCC-F14
Article review compiled by Ozark
Lindenwood University Cohort C.