#TLElem Off to a Great Start!

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500 tweets in one hour!

I’m so glad I saw Joyce Valenza’s Feb 16 blog post at Neverending Search titled #TLELEM: Starting a New Conversation.  In it she explains that the graduate course she’s currently teaching is made up of mainly elementary education students, and they suggested the #TLElem hashtag as a way to connect with other Twitter users who serve the elementary population.

The first #TLElem Live Chat was scheduled for Feb 19, and I think it succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams!  Many thanks to Laurren Kresge (@librarianmissk) and Caitlin Kordek (@cktechtl), the students who facilitated the discussion and who have archived the tweets here.  And no, that was not a misprint in the title sentence!

 

 

If you are working at the elementary level and you Tweet, I hope you’ll leave a comment with your Twitter handle so that I can start following you.  You can follow me @LibraryLoriJune

 

My One Month Anniversary on Twitter

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As of today, I have officially been using Twitter for one month!

I sent my first tweet to school library guru @gwynethjones (aka The Daring Librarian) on Sept 10 to thank her for so generously sharing with her personal learning network (PLN).  It was actually two and a half weeks later before I sent my second tweet, because for some reason I felt very intimidated about tweeting, as though I didn’t have anything important enough to share.  But once I got over my shyness it didn’t take long to get the hang of using Twitter, and so far in the past eleven days I have:

 

  • participated in a chat about book talking led by Donalyn Miller @DonalynBooks (among others) using the hashtag #titletalk
  • promoted the @Jumpstartkids #ReadfortheRecord campaign
  • shared pictures of myself dressed as Ladybug Girl visiting classrooms to read aloud
  • participated in a picture book discussion led by @ColbySharp and @MrSchuReads using the hashtag #SharpSchu
  • connected with two fantastic authors, @AmeDyckman (who has a great sense of humor) and @ShanaCorey (who I’ve decided is going to be the subject of a future 5th grade author study at my school)
  • created an account at Bitly to shorten the URLs I’m tweeting, and to track the clicks on my tweet links
  • retweeted a tweet to enter a book giveaway AND WON!  (The book is The Cloak Society by @JerameyKraatz and sounds like something that will just fly off my shelves – after I read it first, of course, the minute it arrives!)
  • followed Mo Willems@The_Pigeon and Professor Severus Snape @_Snape_ who are both hilarious
  • collected 23 followers of my own, which I did not expect to happen in such a short time (you can follow me @LibraryLoriJune)

Quite a crash course in using Twitter, eh?  I’ve known for quite some time that Twitter could be a valuable networking tool, but I resisted signing up because I knew that a) it would be another online presence that would require maintenance to keep it updated, and b) I was afraid I might become addicted to it since I do tend to develop obsessions about things.  (Do you think I called that one right?!?)  But until I started using it myself, I didn’t realize just how powerful and versatile it could be.

Just like any other Web 2.0 tool, Twitter is what you make it.  Please consider leaving a comment to share what you find most valuable about Twitter, and if you aren’t using it yet maybe this post will convince you to give it a try!