Day 3: Who follows who: The following dilemma

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When I joined twitter way back I  had an issue with this "following" story. I was completely freaked out when the first stranger started following me on twitter. This resulted in me not going near twitter for a few months until a mentor from Australia @bronst gave me a list of a few people to follow in my subject area. That is when  it all started making sense to me! I could not believe how much I can learn from expert "strangers" in 140 characters at a time!

Basically, a great deal of the value of twitter comes down to who you follow!!! If you follow GREAT MINDS and specialists in your field/subject area/hobbie, you will learn along with them. You will see what they read, you will be the first to know what they write and this will keep you on the cutting edge of your personal professional development pathway. This means that every time you follow someone you have to ask yourself the following 2 questions:

• Is this person authentic? (check their Bio and website or blog: you will find this by clicking on their name in a tweet and twitter also makes some suggestions based on who you follow already and your interests)
   
• Can you learn from them? This can also depend on if you share the same interests (bullet 1), but a good way to see if you will be able to learn from and with them, is to check their tweets. Do they talk about interesting stuff or do they talk about what they are having for breakfast? Do they share great articles and resources? Do they respond to others?

How do I follow someone? 
Twitter makes it very easy for us to follow people. You will notice follow buttons or links everywhere on your twitter page. After considering the top two bullet points, just click on the follow button under their profile. The moment you start following someone, their tweets will show up in your personal stream (Home-->Timeline). Should I follow my students? As a rule I do not advise teachers to follow your students unless bullet 2 above applies or if you are interested in following your students progress. I would rather add them to a student list (which we will deal with later) or interact with them using a hashtag (will also be dealt with later) Should I follow everybody who follows me? Personally, I stick to my two bullets above. From time to time I look through my followers, check my 2 bullet criteria and then decide if I want to follow or not. You can click on your list of followers (to the top right of your Home/Profile page) to see who are following you. The problem with following too many people is that your timeline stream gets cluttered with irrelevant information and comments. So, from time to time I even unfollow people who do not contribute to my professional development. I think I will ask my network this question:

Why would people want to follow me and what can they see?
People will follow you if your 2 bullets are in place (see above). From your Bio they can see that you have a common interest and if you tweet responsibly, share resources, respond to questions and act as a filter for your followers, they would like to follow you. When they follow you, every tweet that you create will appear in their timeline (Home --> timeline). Activities for day 3: Start building your personal learning network

• Here are some of my lists that you can go and peruse and decide who on the list you want to follow: Sateachers ( teachers in South Africa who twitter- if are a South African teacher and want to be added to the list, please send a tweet with your school name, town, subject and #sateachers in it and I will add you to my list) My edtech favourites: People who share wonderful links to tools and educational resources I will ask  my network to share their lists as well.
• Go to the unworkshop stream by clicking here or searching in www.twitter.com for #ict4champions and follow everybody who are part of the stream.
• Check your timeline stream (Home-->Timeline) at least 3 times a day
• Send 3 tweets responding to the activities that you had to do and remember to put #ict4champions in your tweet in order for us to see it in our workshop stream.

See you in the twitter verse! if you would like to comment below on how this un-workshop is going or want to voluntweer to organise a day's activity also let me know below :-)

 <—Back to main twitter un-workshop page   | Move on to #Day4: How do you read your twitter streams

     My time for working and supporting on this workshop  is sponsored by Casio SA. Thank you for making this unworkshop possible!!