Thanks to the disaster of Hurricane Sandy, many of us have had an extra week of vacation. What did you do—or better yet what didn’t you do? I decided to tackle social networking, which gives educators the opportunity to meet other educators from all over the world who are working on similar topics such as BYOD, Common Core Standards, IEP’s, Alternate Assessments, and my favorite, Apps for special-needs students.
My mantra has been the Common Core Standards, how they will affect students with special needs and what apps may help students meet the standards. So here are seven steps I took to develop my social network and help spread the word about my favorite education topics.
1) Started Twitter account- only professional tweets: https://twitter.com/vwindman
2) Pinterest This site seemed rather easy and allowed me to be very selective, creating a variety of boards under one topic. Unfortunately, users cannot share media with other sites.
3) Tumblr Another fun media site- meets with Twitter, allows more than one blog, aligns with Scoopit and Facebook.
4) BlogSpot Have one particular passion? Try BlogSpot.
5) http://teachem.com/footsteps2brilliance Want to start your school? Develop your own school? Tweet and spread the word.
6) Scoopit Any information I like I can “Scoopit” and post on my page then I can connect it automatically to Twitter.
7) Learnist Similar to Pinterest, but offers more ability to add pictures.
If you post what you believe in, you will find colleagues who will rescoop, retweet or follow you on one of your blogs or boards.Spread your words in education!
Vicki Windman is a special education teacher at Clarkstown High School South.
