Being a Twitter Connected Educator

One of the great joys in my life is my career as an educator. Social media has made it so much easier for me to stay on top of the news that impacts education and the tools and technology I could be using to create lifelong, engaged learner.  This blog post was inspired by my local teacher's association president who asked if I wouldn't mind sharing a few of the twitter feeds and blogs I follow. I confess, I sometimes have a short attention span, so my blog following has diminished, but through following some of these people I am connected to great blogs to read.

Here is a sampling of the twitter feeds I follow that contribute to my professional growth.  If there is someone stellar that contributes to your professional growth as an educator, I would love you to comment and share.

People in Education:

•  @dianeravitch - formerly a Bush staffer and now an anti-standardized test advocate (Author of "The Death and Life of the American School System" among others) her tweets go to the core of educational reform. Also retweets several salient points about education
• @woodsmurphy -  New Jersey's 2010-2011 Teacher of the year and now a Washington Teaching Ambassador fellow
• @NJToyMsD - Jeanne DelColle is New Jersey's 2011-2012 Teacher of the Year
  
• @angelamaiers - believes in passion driven teaching and promotes the concept that #youmatter; values the use of social media to promote education
• @teacherken - this Virginia based educator also has a blog called the Daily Kos
• @stumpteacher - Josh is Illinois' 2011-2012 teacher of the year and has a passion for technology in education
• @tomwhitby -  Founder of #edchat, many tweets about the state of education
  
• @rweingarten - President of the American Federation of teachers (I also follow @AFTunion)

Educational Organizations/ Publications:

• @educationweek - from "Education Week" newspaper; provides blog links, daily education news. I also follow @EdWeekTeacher
• @NJEA - the teacher's association in the state I work in. Of course it makes sense to follow it, and its parent organization publication @NEAToday, as well as @NEAmedia
• @NJ_CTY - New Jersey's County Teachers of the Year provide communications to help strengthen education in our state.
• @usedgov -  US Department of Education - no explanation needed why I would follow this one or @arneduncan
• @TeachingQuality -  The Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ) tweets about teacher quality and teacher education.
• @ScholasticTeach - tweets about resources and life as an educator
• @NYTEducation - News from the education section of the New York Times
• @USATEducation - news and blogs related to education from USA Today
• @ASCD - formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, tweets include promotion of learning for every child
• @njtag - New Jersey Teacher's Action Group

Stay Tuned:

As I was preparing this I realized their are a plethora of quality tweeters that deserve their own mention, so stay tuned for future Twitter based blogs about:

• Educational Technology
• Agricultural Education
• Agricultural Literacy
• Career and Technical Education