Right now, just about any media outlet, product, celebrity or local business seems to have their Twitter name prominently displayed, yet in my everyday life, almost everyone thinks I’m a bit…odd…to even bother with twittering. I think this is so odd, because some of my most valuable professional colleagues are people in my Twitter network! I find useful websites, I get great ideas to try with our students, I discover articles and current research or advocacy tips–all from this valuable network of people that I’ve cobbled together for myself on Twitter. I’d say it’s the most valuable tool I have in my toolbelt! There’s great comfort in finding that I’m not the only one in the world that spends time thinking of things like core common standards vs. AASL standards or “new and emerging tech to promote reading,” which brings me to an important point!

As has been said many times over, the reason that most people who try but end up being puzzled and disdainful of Twitter is that they do not have a relevant group of people to share with & learn from. Hashtags help with this dilemma, and for the teacher librarians out there, Joyce Valenza’s suggestion of using #tlchat could make the difference!

Here’s how to use the hashtag to create our own Teacher-Librarian learning network:
Go to Twitter.com and type #tlchat in the search box. You don’t even need to log in!
Up pops a list of recent tweets by teacher librarians about….library-ish stuff! At right, look at a typical example of tweets–they’re from tonight.

There are so many links to be found that you could easily lose an evening just learning. Then, once you see who is tweeting with the #tlchat hashtag, you will have a number of interesting people to follow!

Once you find a few people to follow, you can see who they follow, and you are on your way to building your own network! Wildly valuable, and quite addictive….