Twitter for Professional Development

Every one of us knows that since the economy is tight so are our travel budgets for professional development. Twitter (and blogs of course!) provides us with great networking and resource sharing opportunities without ever leaving the comfort of our offices (although I would love to go back to Clearwater, FL). 

One of the first steps to get started with Twitter for professional development is to find knowledgable people in the field (in our case advisors) who will provide, via their "tweets", valuable information about how we can make our own programs better, what works and what doesn't, and perhaps even offer some valuable cameraderie. 

Some of the people I've been following on Twitter include:

ReaFacetoFace :  Academic advisor; Calgary. 

Bismark State College: Advising Office; North Dakota

The Chronicle: Get Chronicle news snippets via Twitter

super_trouper: Advising Administrator; Penn State

Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter. Whenever I post a new link to the blog, a tweet is also sent out so that you can be notified in real-time. It's also a fantastic way to dialogue with me about something you've seen on the blog. 

You can see a great example of a Twitter group via our NACADA Tech Seminar website;this log of "tweets" now serves as a conference record and allows users to continue adding to the conversation when they return to their institutions. Another good way to use Twitter is described in an article posted in The Chronicle of Higher Education; whenever you get a good tip or find something useful just send it to twitter. It helps you remember it later on and also shares the tip with the community that's following you. 

According to recent literature, Twitter can also help those of us who are a little shy but still have something to contribute to the conversation. It is much easier to send out a twitter message than it is to raise our hand in the middle of a crowded room to voice an opinion. On the flip side, Twitter is not a private application but rather spews out whatever we tweet to everyone who is "following" us. There is the potential for information to leak into the wrong hands if the application is not used correctly.