Building Community with Twitter
Last updated: 11 March 2010

One of the key reasons for joining Twitter is to become part of a community.  A "community" can take several forms.  It might be:

- your Personal or Professional Learning Network

- a Community of Practice (CoP) - a collection of like-minded people who join together for a specific purpose or activity

- a Learning Community - a body students/learners and others who learn together

Building your Personal or Professional Learning Network (PLN). 

"A personal learning network can be your most powerful learning tool no matter what the subject."  (Building your personal learning network, Daniel R Tobin 1998)

What is a Personal or Professional Learning Network (PLN)?

"There is nothing new about personal learning networks. They are the people and information sources that help you accomplish your goals, either on the job or in your personal pursuits."  ( The Art & Technique of Personal Learning Networks, David Warlick)

Who should be in your PLN?

"The members of your network do not need to be people with whom you work directly. In fact, you do not even need to know the people personally. The members of your network should be people, both inside and outside of your work group and your company, who have the knowledge that you are trying to master and who are willing to share their knowledge and experience with you" (Building your personal learning network, Daniel R Tobin 1998)

The people you choose to part of your PLN will  share with you links to useful sources of information,  answer your question and reinforce your learning

Building a Community of Practice or Learning Community

Whether you are joining or building a Community for a one-off event or an ongoing basis, Twitter has a lot to offer.  Students who see themselves as a "community" are often more open to communicating and learning from one another in a class situation.  

You can establish contacts with people by “following” them and this means you will receive their tweets.   Who you follow is completely up to you. Take a look at their profile page and their recent tweets and decide if they are someone you would like to interact with. If you are looking for a good deal of interaction with people, then it might be a good idea to avoid choosing people who follow lots of people, as they are unlikely to have the time to interact with everyone on an individual basis. How do you find people? Use Twitter search to find twitter accounts. If you are looking for a list of learning professionals, on Twitter, then the Connexions Directory is a good place to start.  But if over 1200 people is too much.  Try the 100 Featured Learning Professionals list Twitter Professors: 18 People to Follow for a Real Time Education, Mashable, Twitter lists are another great way to find users you might want to follow. There are lists out there for just about every topic compiled by thousands of people. Follow Friday.  Look out for the use of the hashtags #followfriday or #ff  in tweets for recommendations of people to follow How many people you should follow? Some people only like to follow a small number, others can cope with hundreds if not thousands.  Note: you do not HAVE to follow someone if they follow you.  Also, if it gets too "noisy", you can stop following someone by going to their profile page, and clicking the right arrow beside the button that says Following. This will open another box with a Remove button on it. Click that to stop following their updates.  You can also block someone from following you, if required. What other places can you find people to follow on Twitter? MrTweet Tweepz Tweep Search Twellow Professors on Twellow Twubble We Follow Who should I follow Letting people know you are on Twitter If you have a blog or website, you could place a Twitter badge on it that displays your latest tweets, This is a useful way for people to find out you are on Twitter, and to follow you if they want.  Twitter provides a number of different types of badges to embed on your blog or web page. The badge you choose will depend upon if you can use Javascript on your site, or whether only Flash is allowed. Using Twitter with your PLN or learning community In the following pages we will be looking at how to use Twitter to communicate, share links and resources, collaborate and so on.

Reading list 2010, the year of the personal learning network, blog-efl, 9 January 2010) How to build a personal learning network, Richard Byrne 20 ways you can use Twitter lists, Mashable, 4 November, 2009 PLN Yourself, Sue Waters