Calling South African teachers to start twittering: Online un-workshop

Twitter has great potential as a creative and collaborative learning and teaching tool in the classroom. It has been chosen as the number 1 learning & teaching tool for the last 4 (going on 5) years globally, which shows that it is tool that has to be taken seriously.

Some of the reasons for using twitter as a teacher and in your classroom:

• You can create a personal learning network on the fly
• You can learn from others and get instant support
• You can use this tool to teach your learners how to use social media responsibly
• You can share resources, events, thoughts, lesson ideas... quick as lightning!
• You can have discussions on topical issues in your classroom and in education in general.
• You can use it to connect your class to other global classrooms and experts
• .................

Obviously it is just a tool and learning and teaching only takes place if we use a tool effectively! My mission is to get at least 500 South African teachers to do just that! So this online un-workshop will guide newbie twitter teachers or those wanting to learn about how to use twitter for teaching and learning through some of the steps- from getting started, to creating a learning networks- to using the tool more effectively- to using it as a classroom tool- to sharing resources- to embedding it your school website, LMS, or your blog- to managing it -to using it as an on demand assessment and feedback tool-to......

The (.....) parts is where the UN part of the un-workshop comes in. Even though I, and hopefully others, will be providing structure as far as making sure that everybody will be getting some of the basic information and providing learning objects and references along the way, this workshop will be dependent on the input, direction and needs of all who participate. I will also invite my learning network to interact, support and share best practices with you and I am sure we will ALL be able to add value and direction to this unworkshop. So if you are part of my amazing twitter PLN, please let me know if you will be able to mentor a few new teacher twits and get them to understand why we are a-twitter about twitter!
It will also entail some online ad hoc webinars (which will be hosted by Schoolnet) to help you connect and we even may want to meet face to face and have edu-tweetups all around the country?!!

The whole workshop will be run via Facebook (www.ict4champions.co.za) and my blog (www.school2.co.za) for those without faces ;-). So, you can either RSVP as a comment on the event blogpost here, or on my Facebook events page.

Looking forward to interacting with you all! If you are a South African teacher please add #sateachers to your tweet. Our hashtag for this unworkshop is #ict4champions.