Nine Great Reasons for Economics & Business Teachers to use Twitter

As Geoff wrote in his article on developing a Personal Learning Network, Twitter can become an integral part of your teaching and professional development. Not convinced? Here are some reasons why you should take five minutes to get started with Twitter. Feel free to add your suggestions for how we can extend this list using the comments box further below.

1 Join a Virtual Department

Business and economics teachers often ply their trade alone or in a small department where timetable pressures make it difficult to plan, share and discuss. Twitter can be like a virtual staffroom into which you can step when it suits you. Within minutes you can get answers to questions, suggested resources and ideas from fellow professionals. Twitter is particularly good for getting last-minute inspiration for lessons! Take a look at the latest feed of tweets by colleagues using the #ecbusteach hashtag to get an idea of the rich seam of resources, conversations and ideas.

2 Reach an international audience

The Twitter teaching community spans the globe. You are just as likely to get help from an Economics teacher in Auckland or a Business teacher in Singapore as a colleague closer to home. Economics and Business teachers around the world share the same interests and challenges.

3 Instant feedback on your teaching ideas

You have an idea for teaching motivation, cash flow or deflation - but will it work? Describe it in 140 characters or less and get some feedback from colleagues who’ve faced the same challenge. Twitter is a great sounding board for teaching approaches and ideas - and not just for PGCE or NQTs!

4 Your daily Business & Economics newspaper

Admit it - you sometimes struggle to make time to sit down and read a newspaper or browse the business & economics news stories in the online new sources. No worries! Follow the best Twitter users and you’ll get ready-made links to relevant and useful news stories. Follow dedicated Twitter accounts like the BBC, Guardian, Telegraph & Independent business sections and you’ll get the breaking news too. Retweet those links to your students and share with other colleagues who follow you to maximise the benefit.

5 Daily Free CPD - Twitter as your Personal Learning Network

Twitter enables you to benefit from to the kind of powerful networking you gain from high quality traditional CPD courses - but it is available to you all the time! It’s just a matter of finding the right people to follow. You’ll be amazed at how supportive the Twitter teaching community is. Find fellow Twitter users who are delivering the same exam board units as your department. Find a teacher who can help solve a tricky ICT problem. Follow Twitter hashtags to focus on specialist interests (e.g. the #BUSS4 hastag being used by AQA Business teachers)

6 Connect directly with real-world Economics & Business

You’ll be amazed at who is on Twitter - and how prepared they are to communicate with you! Want to contact an entrepeneur directly? No problem - many entrepreneurs maintain their own personal Twitter accounts and are happy to respond to questions and requests directly. Inspirational entrepreneurs like Kirsty Henshaw, Will King, Fraser Doherty and Mary Portas are great examples. Writers and broasdcasters like Rachel Bridge, Robert Peston and Tim Harford are also active. Businesses in your locality are increasingly running Twitter accounts - a great way to make contact to arrange business visits, work experience or request speakers.

7 A New Virtual Professional Subject Association

Lets face it - traditional subject associations often seem stuck in the Dark Ages when it comes to social networking. Why wait a year for a conference to learn about the “latest ideas in teaching” when you can get them immediately, everyday. On Twitter you’ll find bright, energetic, supportive and resourceful colleagues who provide all of the member benefits you need from a subject association - for free.

8 Keep up with your students

Your students are on Twitter - so you should be too! Twitter is incredibly simple! Just visit Twitter.com and create your account. A little light searching using key words for your areas of interest will soon yield a list of interesting people to follow. tutor2u has already made this process easier for you by providing ready-to-use list of Business teachers and Economics teachers on Twitter. Following these accounts is a terrific place to start and you’ll soon find lots of them following you too!

9 Make Twitter an extension of your classroom

Ok - the Luddite ICT coordinators or SMTs at some schools and colleges ban access to Twitter on the network. It’s always easier to ban Twitter than take the time to understand how it might be used. But those dinosaurs won’t be around for ever and they can’t stop your students using Twitter at home or on their mobiles. There are many different ways to use Twitter in the classroom. You can post updates for students and parents. You can also encourage students to collaborate through Twitter while they are in the classroom. There are some great examples of Economics teachers and Business teachers using Twitter to manage and support student research tasks or guide exam revision.

Hopefully you’ll find the above reasons useful. You might be in the unfortunate position of working at a school or college which bans access to social media networks. The important thing to remember about Twitter is that it is a tool, not a solution. Of course there is much on there that has little value, but there is also a great wealth of knowledge, experience and skills that teaching colleagues are offering to share.