About

This "un"-workshop consists of about 18 days (and growing) worth of twitter activities which should assist you to see the educational value of twitter and get you into the swing of things! There is no time restriction on completing the un-workshop!!! This is about your own professional development! You can do it any time and take as long as you like to complete it (although I advise you to try and do it over a shorter period of time so that you do not loose focus) .  It should only take up about 15-30 minutes of your time every day. You can even decide to sit down and do a few "days" at a time.
As this is an ongoing effort (to get teachers to tweet) we will also be updating the daily posts and adding stuff and additional days as we go on. So it is a workshop in the making with various collaborating teachers adding value. If you see that something has not "yet" been covered and you want to contribute a day, let me know!

There will also be real time webinars scheduled from time to time to chat about your twails and twibulations with other edutwits!

If you want to receive a certificate of completion to hang on your wall (you will be a certified edutwit) you will have to officially register as well as complete at least the first 15 days of all the daily activities. To see the criteria for certified edutwit-ness, click here.

So how do you get started? The steps to become a certified edutwit is as follows:

• Download the  Getting started tutorial presentation and register for a twitter account at www.twitter.com (or m.twitter.com on your mobile phone)
• Register for the unworkshop so that we can track your progress and support you as well as let you know when we publish new days
• Follow the daily posts and do the activities by clicking on the relevant daily activity at the top/bottom of this page (bookmark this page)
• Check the workshop stream  (#ict4champions and #edutwits) regularly and reply to/or retweet others' tweets.
• Don't forget to add the hashtag #ict4champions  and #edutwits and the day that you are busy with (#day4) to every tweet you send so that we can track your twitter progress. 
• Go and  Like our workshop facebook page  so that you can receive the daily notifications in your Facebook stream.
• Follow @ict4champions and @maggiev on twitter (click on the follow button) as well as the other interesting #edutwits who are doing the edutwit unworkshop. 

What is this unworkshop all about? The aim of this unworkshop is to help teachers and lecturers (especially South African teachers) to see how valuable twitter can be as a classroom and personal learning tool.  My mission is to get at least 500 new teachers to twitter for education! Twitter has great potential as a creative and collaborative learning and teaching tool in the classroom. It AGAIN has been chosen as the number 1 learning & teaching tool by teachers globally, which shows that it is tool that has to be taken seriously. Some of the reasons for using twitter as a teacher and in your classroom:

• You can create a personal learning network on the fly
• You can learn from others and get instant support
• You can use this tool to teach your learners how to use social media responsibly
• You can use it as a higher order thinking tool in the classroom
• You can share resources, events, thoughts, lesson ideas... quick as lightning!
• You can have discussions on topical issues in your classroom and in education in general.
• You can use it to connect your class to other global classrooms and experts
• .................

Obviously it is just a tool and learning and teaching only takes place if we use a tool effectively! The only way we can experience the value of twitter is to use it regularly.  So this online un-workshop will guide newbie twitter teachers or those wanting to learn about how to use twitter for teaching and learning, through some of the steps- from getting started, to creating a learning networks- to using the tool more effectively- to using it as a classroom tool- to sharing resources- to embedding it your school website, LMS, or your blog- to managing it -to using it as an on demand assessment and feedback tool-to...... The (.....) parts is where the UN part of the un-workshop comes in. Even though I, and hopefully others, will be providing structure as far as making sure that everybody will be getting some of the basic information and providing learning objects and references along the way, this workshop will be dependent on the input, direction and needs of all who participate. I will also invite my learning network to interact, support and share best practices with you and I am sure we will ALL be able to add value and direction to this unworkshop. So if you are part of  my amazing twitter PLN, please let me know if you will be able to mentor a few new teacher twits and get them to understand why we are a-twitter about twitter! It will also entail some online ad hoc webinar (which will be hosted by Schoolnet) to help you connect and we even may want to meet face to face and have edu-tweetups all around the country?!! Looking forward to interacting with you all! If you are a South African teacher please add #sateachers to your tweet. Our hashtag for this un-workshop is #edutwits and don't forget to also follow and share with the other #ict4champions.

Daily tweetness:

• Day 1: Getting started and getting others started
• Day2: The importance of your twitter profile
• Day 3: Who follows Who: the following dilemma
• Day 4: How do you read your twitter streams?
• Day5: How to have discussions in twitter?
• Day6: What are hashtags?
• Day7: Creating a classroom hashtag
• Day8: Retweeting the magic of passing along great stuff
• Day9: Direct private tweet messages
• Day 10: Sharing long website links on twitter
• Day 11: Sharing resource files and documents on twitter
• Day 12: How do you share videos and images on twitter
• Day 13: How to create easy-to-follow twitter lists
• Day 14: 6 steps to create a twitter backchannel for your classroom
• Day 15: How to create a twitter event backchannel for your conference or event
• Day 16: How do you backup your own or class tweets?
• Day 17: How to manage your twitter information overload
• Day 18: Managing twitter from your desktop using tweetdeck

 My time for developing and supporting this workshop  is sponsored by Casio SA. Thank you for making this un-workshop possible!!