I am a science teacher, I have joined twitter, now what?

You've signed up to an account.

Choose a @ name that isn't too long. And get a twitter app on your mobile device.

Now follow some people. I recommend @viciascience, @needhaml56, @lgolton, @kdwscience, @a_weatherall @bio_joe @asober @DrDav @agittner @cleverfiend @stuartphysics @lornamonroe @MaryUYSEG @teachingofsci and @mrsdrsarah as a starting point. Also follow organisations like @theASE @tesScience and @ITEfaraday

There are some lovely people like @hthompson1982 @natkin and @teachingtricks who will do what they can to help other teachers too.

Now start tweeting. But what can you tweet?

Links would be the first suggestion: to an interesting science or education story, to a great website or teaching resource, to a blog post, or just anything that you find interesting.

Photographs and images would be my next suggestion. A funny or interesting science image or cartoon. A photograph of your students work, a display you have made, a slide from a PowerPoint you are proud of. Be wary not to post photographs of your students if you are unsure the school has the relevant releases from parents.

A comment on an incident that has happened to you, particularly if it is positive. A comment on a news story.

Another thing to realise is that you are connected to a network of around 700 UK science teachers and even more abroad as well as numerous science and science education organisations you can ask a question or for help.

And lastly, of course you can retweet the tweets of others and reply to their tweets.

If you want your tweet to have a wider audience than just your followers then include a hashtag in your tweet. I recommend #asechat #scichat or #ukedchat then people who filter ALL tweets by hashtags will be able to see what you have to say.

Do set up saved searches of hashtags like #asechat so you can browse them yourself. You can find new people to interact with that way too.

Welcome to the world to the UK science teacher community on twitter.

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Location:Rudgleigh Avenue,Easton-in-Gordano,United Kingdom

Summary of #ASEchat 25th March 2013 (92) How can we support new subject leaders?

The chat mainly consisted of advice from the contributors to people who would be starting a new post. They could be split into thee main categories. A lot of advice was about building relationships, another strong theme was leadership and finally there were ideas about how to develop into the subject leader role.

The comments below will be a useful read for anyone preparing for a leadership role.

There was a theme about relationships:

Early in #asechat @gregtheseal said that a new subject leader would need to build relationships with the team and @bio_joe said make sure any internal candiate you beat to the job doesn’t become an enemy. @hrogerson tweeted in reply that a new post holder should talk to everyone in the department and be friendly. @MrsDrSarah said that it was important that new post holders be honest, but not brutal as the development of the team is important.

@KDWscience tweeted that never being too busy for your staff is an important characteristic in a new leader and @littlejenster comments that having a sense of humour and being able to listen were important too.

@DavidCumbers said that subject leaders should pick fights carefully. Which will need to be fought today, which can wait until the subject leader knows where their backup will come from. Along similar lines: @stanothermic tweeted that new subject leaders should know that they will have to say things that others won’t like.

@Mrcjhewitt tweeted another reason why relationships are important, he said that too many post holders leave team building until later, but although one person can make a difference, they can’t do everything.

Another strand about leadership:

@hrogerson said that new post holders should lead by example and be prepared to do what you ask others to do. @oboelizzy made the comments that a new post holder should focus on teaching and learning in the classroom.

@littlejaneyface said that new subject leaders should know how to prioritise, they may feel the need to change everything to make their mark, but this won’t be practical for the whole department.

@gregtheseal said that subject leaders should make sure that they are doing the things they are asking others to do. He also said that subject leaders should think about the purpose of their actions, for example, why collect data if you are not going to use it.

@IETFaraday tweeted that subject leaders should start every meeting with “this meeting will help learning by…” If you can’t say why, postpone the meeting until you can! @Bio_joe backed up this idea by saying that “sharing best practice” should be a standing item on the agenda.

@julesgordon1 said that TLR holders should talk to each other before the meeting so they have the same vision and Heads of Faculty can share the delivery with the other post holders.

@damianainscough tweeted that new subject leaders should know their success criteria in terms of student outcomes. (Improve “T+L” and similar is not specific enough).

@IETFaraday said that new post holders should be prepared to challenge both upwards and downwards: Stand up for your staff, but also stand up for whole school priorities

@Mrcjhewitt said that subject leaders can build time and expertise if they remember you lead a team...not do everything themselves; they should value and trust others.

@Bio_Joe gave some other advice about building relationships: Find out what everyone's motivations are in the team. Why are they a teacher? What do they want to do? What interests do they have?

And some ideas about how new subject leaders can be developed:

@ashl3ylaw explained that new subject leaders can be supported by having a mentor, who is someone in a similar role with more experience. The two will meet regularly for discussions. @A_Weatherall somed up the support in a word: “mentoring”. 

@DavidCumbers suggested that new subject leaders should meet the rest of the school in the staffroom, and @hrogerson responded that she agreed as some of the best support can be found outside of the department. And @miss_m_w said that new subject leaders should make opportunities to meet with other subject leaders to share successes and ways to deal with issues.

@specialsciteach said that she was allowed to find her way with a guiding hand in the background: a new post holder needs to be able to make their own decisions, with support.

@hrogerson said that as a line manager of new post holders she would give them something achievable to work towards, that a newly appointed subject leader may not know what their job entails and direction from the line manager is important.

Other advice:

@obeolizzy said that new subject leaders should look at work of R. Driver, R.

Millar, J. Osborne, P. Scott, R. Watson, D.West, J.Wellington, R.Duschl, P. Adey, et al. In other tweet she said that subject leaders should attend ASE conferences.

@heatherakane tweeted that there has been a lot done by National Strategy on effective departments and new post holders should read them

@gregtheseal said that the NSLC aspiring heads of science course was the best CPD he had done. 

What do you use twitter for?

I was asked this question last night, but I wasn't at my computer so the best I could do is send a couple of tweets in reply. But a 140 characters, even two lots of 140 characters does not begin to explain how I use twitter.

I think that the two comments above do a disservice to myself. I do "take" from twitter, but I also "give". I hope that is reflected in the number of my tweets that are marked as favourites or retweeted by other twitter users.

So what have a got out of twitter and how do I use it?

Firstly, I don't use twitter independently. I have this blog, a tumblr blog, a pinterest account a TES connect account, googlemail, googledrive, a delicious account and an about.me page. http://about.me/helen.rogerson

These extra accounts allow me to share resources. Pinterest allows me to link to photographs and describe them in 1000 characters. Many more than twitter. A link to this photograph and description can be tweeted, but the photograph stays organised on my "boards" so it is possible to find again in order to use. With tumblr I can create a blog post around a video, set of images, link, sound file or writing and add hashtags so I can find them again. Again I can automatically tweet from my tumblr account as I can from Pinterest allowing me to categorise the information and write more than 140 characters. 

Delicious and pinterest are also useful as I can save links and/or images to them an find them later. The ability to "favourite" tweets is great, but they are difficult to search. Pinterest allows me to save resources under titles and delicious allows me to tag them so I can search them later. 

If I want to share a resource then I can upload it to TES or store it as  googledoc and tweet the link. 

And if I want to give or receive more personal advice I will use the direct message service on twitter to send my email address to another twitter user so we can contact each other directly. 

Many users I follow use facebook because you can write more than 140 characters and comments are linked to the post, not spread out in a timeline. But twitter allows them to reach further and some social media apps allow you to post to more than one social media source at once. 

I think there is a lot more power in twitter if alternative social media is used.

what makes a good science teacher?

Why tweet?

I don't usually like to write blogs posts about twitter. It all gets a bit circular when your main audience for the blog are people you connect with via twitter. However, over the weekend I have been gradually feeling the need to put something in writing.

Why are we tweeting? Really, honestly, deep down, why do we feel the need to go on to social media and make a comment?

I started with the TES forums. I was looking for a new job and miserable in my current role. I was also quite lonely. So I would read the job hunting forums and pay and conditions. I then grew to know members of the community and they became my "friends". Then I registered for a facebook account. This type of social media I do like; it helps connect me with my family (who are far away) and the friends I don't see very often.

I am not sure why I moved to twitter. I tried it because my partner was using it, but I didn't like it. Then I decided to have another go and found cleverfiend and teachingofsci, who I recognised from the TES forums as helpful people. The community of science teachers and other teachers grew.

The twitter community is on the whole very positive and it is full of teachers who want to improve their practice. But I am a glass half empty sort of person and I find it hard sometimes to deal with those who seem to self-congratulate and self-publicise.

But am I doing that too? Am I one of the twitter users who does it for personal gain?

I hope not.

My aim is to connect science teachers and make science teaching the best it can be. This is on a personal level, school level, regional level and national level. Because I am a science teacher and believe in teaching balanced science to all English school children.

It is bigger than me.

Twitter allows me to connect with the people I need to even be able to start to reach my aim, but it isn't the only thing I do because I am a member of the science teacher body the ASE and that is much more important that retweeting the thoughts of someone I believe will give me a "leg up".

So today I look at two sets of hashtags. The one that I feel part of #asechat and think that yes, I am making a difference and supporting science teachers (as they are definitely supporting me). The hash tag is a community. The people there are tweeting to share what they know and add to the knowledge floating in the ether, and in the knowledge that when they need support the community will give back.

And I look at another and think, why tweet? No community, no support, not adding anything new to the educational knowledge of followers, nothing but sound bites being put into a computer database, (adding to global warming). A lot of contributors tweeting for the sake of self-promotion.

But then, I am missing the point. Twitter is a microblogging site. It is there to allow you to say. "I am at a cafe drinking coffee", and the teachers collaborating was never the intention.

Misbehaviour and Disengagement

I read this tweet from Joe Bower, a Canadian teacher and it struck a cord with me.

I recall the start of my second year of teaching and the introduction of a new deputy head. I was working at an inner city school with very low GCSE results, lots of behaviour problems and poor leadership and management. During my first year the management had made it clear that any bad behaviour from students was because our lessons were not engaging enough. I had passed my NQT year and everyone was telling me good things, but I wasn't very confident that my teaching skills were good enough to "engage" the worst behaved students. On top of that ofsted were constantly being mentioned and I didn't feel that I could teach anything other than an unsatisfactory lesson due to the afore mentioned poor behaviour. Our school would go into special measures, which would be hell, and it would be my fault.

Up stepped our new deputy who used his first address to the staff to tell us all that the state of the school was because the teachers were not putting in the effort and he was appointed to sort us out! Not really a confidence booster.

The school was turned around. Not by this deputy head, but by a new building, new management team focusing in on student attainment in year 10 and 11 and a suitable curriculum that included vocational courses. An appropriate curriculum.

While I was working at this school there were members of staff who tried to put in place an appropriate curriculum. It was obvious to them that GCSEs were "failing" the students and they needed different courses and forms of assessment.

It was plain to us that the students were disengaged and badly behaved often because they couldn't access the curriculum and didn't have the skills to be successful. But our students were anything but stupid. They knew that they weren't doing very well, so didn't want to try for fear of failure.

I have a brilliant partner who is a teacher and has spent the last twelve years working in this school through difficult times for the school and difficult times for him. Through it all he has made it his mission to ensure that his students feel confident to learn and make progress. In recent years he has used APP as a tool to help students. I watched him during one difficult year where his timetable was made up of maths - a subject he doesn't have an O-level in - struggle to support two very challenging groups and improve their behaviour by increasing their confidence and therefore improving their engagement with their learning. He didn't do this by making lessons exciting or performing to them, but by helping them overcome academic difficulties.

If a student has behaviour problems it isn't always possible to solve all the problems they have. It is important to remember that there is no magic bullet. Just small steps.

Head's Roundtable?

I will be very interested to see how long this interest lasts.

About 7 head teachers and 3 others are trying to set up their own body to represent their views. Their aim: "We are a non-party politcal group that wants to influence national education policymakers so that education policy is centered upon what is best for the learning of all children."

Perhaps the heads think they will be listened to? But I imagine that if they feel the need to set something like this up then they are not be listened to at the moment.

I hear that the government are not listening to any organisations or looking at the positives of English education. What can a few heads and 1000 followers on twitter achieve? Getting something trending on twitter does not fix the problem.

Do these heads genuinely have a shot at getting the ear of Gove and making a difference? Only time will tell. I do predict it will be difficult though.

York Tweet Up (August)

I can't express how excited I am to have an excuse to go to York and also to meet up with some wonderful twitter people. People who are enthusiastic about science teaching and always want to improve.

We are going to meet and share ideas in a teachmeet style session. I wanted to contribute, but couldn't really think of what to do. However, it came to me in a flash: I have to talk about how much I love the segue course.

I have booked my hotel from 20th-23rd August, allowing us to visit the National Railway Museum and Viking museum too.

I can't wait.

Anyone else who would like to come should contact @missmolecules via twitter.






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Location:Bristol

The Five E approach to lesson planning

Tomorrow evening I will be presenting at #tmclevedon, a Teachmeet at Clevedon school in North Somerset to the uninitiated.

I will be talking about using the 5 E model of lesson planning to help encourage a thinking classroom. I think that it has worked for me this year.
My presentation should be embedded below:



I have included an example of a lesson planned around the experiential learning cycle structure of planning lessons.

Personally, I find that the structure encourages me to do the plenary as the "story"/cycle isn't completed without it. The point of the lesson becomes the evaluation the students do and not the explanation that I give them. I hope this helps to build the thinking skills of my students.

Although I don't have the time or imagination to produce schemes to the quality of the segue scheme, I can still develop lessons and series of lessons that engage and motivate my pupils and help them to understand what they need to do to progress.

EDIT: the evening over ran and I didn't present in the end. It was an hour after it was supposed to finish when I was asked to go on. Next time!


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Lesson Observations and "grades"

I have recently read a blog post by a twitter colleague teachgr, http://teachgr.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/second-year-teaching/ about how he misses the observations that were frequent during his PGCE and NQT years.

It makes me reflect that I used to enjoy observations, doing them and having them done to me. It really was an opportunity to reflect and discuss my practice with another teacher or expert.

When working in inner city Bristol the LA consultant, the behaviour support team (not a criticism, just a fact that behaviour is tough in Bristol schools), the head of department, ASTs and senior management would come and observe regularly. It wasn't a bad thing it was great to get so much feedback on what I was doing well and ideas and suggestions to improve. I was able to bring up how I struggled with levels and the LA consultant helped me, a member of senior management supported me in dealing with students who constantly wanted to go to the loo, and an AST boosted my confidence by complimenting my questioning technique.

Even in my second school there were no judgements given after lesson observations. They weren't supportive though, more an exercise in allowing those in a senior position an opportunity to bully you, but observations were not a competition and those of us at the bottom of the pile all felt the same about them. The school had an observation room and we were encouraged to watch other teachers who were timetabled in that room. But those timetabled were the management favourites, (and we all knew it) and getting the key to sit in the office where you could watch was a Herculean effort. We didn't make use of the opportunity.

In my current academy the observation is about collecting data. Feedback is a form that gets placed in your pigeon hole and it consists of a few sentences. A grade is given and for me it causes resentment and competition amongst staff. I hate and dread observations.

I really hope that in my next school, (one week until I move) I can return to the times of an open classroom with supportive, constructive observations. Moreover, as a leader within the faculty I hope that I can gain as much from observing as I have done in the past from being observed.






I can also recommend the lesson observation pocket book for some good ideas and techniques for observations.

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Sharing Practice

I am fairly sure there is a page on our internal departmental SEF template that asks how we share practice. It is an excellent question. I am always made to feel a bit guilty when I write my answer as I know the truth is "not as well as we could be".

The first school I worked in had a small science staff room next to the prep room where we would sit at lunch and break. We would share our issues and ideas in a very candid way. The kids were hard work and any support was well received. The push in the school was for better teaching as the management believed that better teaching would mean better engagement, behaviour and results. This is true, but as staff we resented the insinuation that our poor teaching was the cause of all the problems within the school. However, the result was we discussed teaching and learning a lot and ideas and advice were shared freely.

Moreover, in the first school I worked in we had schemes of work and we shared all our resources, we were a team with only a few people on the outside keeping their ideas and resources apart from the rest of us.

In my second school we didn't have an area where we could meet at break and lunch. We stayed in our classrooms. The head didn't like the idea of staff congregating out of his knowledge (at least that was our opinion). We did have an AST though who would arrange training days to ensure we talked about assessment or group work. She ensured that the schemes of work were of excellent quality, with lots of different types of activity and levelled outcomes. This helped to share practice.

In this school, according to our SEF, I use the schemes of work to share practice and we have informal discussions. None of which is that true or particularly consistent when it does it happen. Too many barriers and not enough expectations. The only thing I regularly do is send emails out with ideas and links, or photocopy journal articles and give them to people I think might be interested. Not sure the recipients care, or take in what I send. No one send things back to me.

When I move to my forth I will be responsible for ensuring the faculty share ideas and act on what they learn. I will be the front. I need to get back in the habit of discussing learning and I need to make sure that the department act as a team following my vision and pulling together to help each other improve.

I intend to start with the scheme of work, make sure we include various ideas we have had in them. A "live" document. I also need to look at how we use departmental meetings, are we talking about where we store the clamp stands or something more useful? I know that my new school has policies on assessment, so using policies that support good pedagogy should also help share good practice.

I must use my time in the final term to find out about what goes on in my faculty and build trusting relationships with the staff I work with so that I can have discussions about what is happening in the classrooms without them feeling they are being judged.

I have been able to share in the successes of other teachers via twitter and I hope this will make me more open to giving and receiving ideas on the best practice of science teaching.

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Location:Rudgleigh Ave,,United Kingdom

ASE conference

This year's ASE conference was the first I had attended, and I can easily say it was the best CPD I have ever experienced. This was for a variety of reasons.

The highlight of the conference for me was meeting Sir Steve Redgrave. it was definitely a great draw for me. Although I had already booked to go before I knew he would be at one of the events.








He was taking part in the Wellcome Trust Lecture promoting their sport science packs that will be delivered to schools. The lecture was a good balance between interactivity, information and fun.







The science level was high because Professor Hugh Montgomery was there to explain each experiment in detail. This meant there was plenty learn even for the accomplished biology teacher, so as a physics teacher there was a lot for me to pick up on. I wish I had recorded it.

Another major highlight of the conference was being able to meet the people who contribute to #asechat. On Saturday we had an interesting conversation about the positives and negatives of using Twitter. I still believe the positives outweigh any possible negatives and find twitter and incredibly useful in keeping up to date with resources.

The inclusion of the frontiers lectures in the ASE conference is an inspired idea. There was a variety of subjects and each lecture was given by the staff of the University of Liverpool. I went to the lecture on the Large Hadron Collider, which helped to update my knowledge. (For example I now know that neutrinos have mass but that was unsure didn't when I was at university).







It is useful to know that finding the Higgs Boson isn't the end of the work particle physicists have to do, and it helped my ability to answer questions by my students. The search for the Higgs Boson is a hot topic in my classroom.  It was even better having a lecture that was at just the right pace and pitch for the audience to follow. There is a question of whether science teachers try to keep up with current developments in their subject; this lecture was such a positive way of doing that.

Apart from the entertaining aspects of the ASE Conference it was also useful to talk to the exhibiters and gain useful information. I was able to talk to OCR about the Gateway Science course. It is taking some getting used to so a few tips from the OCR team was very useful.

I attended two sessions during my time at the conference. One about numeracy in science and one about literacy. They were fantastic on many levels.

The main thing that I took away from the numeracy session is that we need a consistent approach to numeracy across the school to be "outstanding" according to Ofsted. Worcestershire LA are working on this using their advisors and several schools to build up a pack of resources that can easily be used to compare terminology and procedures in maths and science. This can only help to boost results. (Although there is no numeric data to show the impact yet, the advisors are working on this). I was intrigued by the idea of a collaborative project such as this, and feel that the federation I work in has missed a trick by not working collaboratively like this.

The literacy session was a revelation to me. There was so many techniques brought to my attention, such as speaking frames; point evidence, explanation; nominalisation (turning processes and actions into nouns); using cards to develop continuums to support the students' development of informal talk to formal writing. I have never learned so much as I did in the two hours in that session and it was worth the whole conference to me. Well done Camden and Enfield LAs.

However, the real congratulations goes to the ASE, who organised a fantastic conference. I can't wait for 2013.

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Location:Liverpool University, UK

Creating Your Own CPD Opportunities.

During the past four years I have worked in a school where there have been very limited CPD opportunities for me up until a few weeks ago. This has very disappointing in the light of there being three different management courses run by the school at different levels and there were and now are again opportunities to do courses with the National College for School Leadership, but only for favourites of the management.

It was most distressing when I came to fill in a job application form and all of my training is from four years ago. I decided to put things right for myself. CPD is available if you look for it and are prepared to use your own time.

Science teachers have/should have good access to training through the science learning centres. Unfortunately, despite the courses being paid for by bursaries this was still blocked for me.

I joined the ASE, which gives me access to School Science Review. Although not all the articles are of use to me on a day-to-day basis, I have found something in each addition that is of use or interest. Membership of the ASE has also given me access to two local events. The West of England Science Teacher Conference and a visit to Slimbridge on one summers evening. (I really enjoyed seeing a water vole, the Otters and a Spoonbill). Both of these events were outside school hours so I could go along.

I started using twitter for connecting with other teachers. Reading other blog posts and asking for ideas has been very useful. But more useful has been the positive community; I have connected with people who want to be better practitioners, who want to build a strong education system and have pride in their classrooms. For the first time in a long time I am more satisfied with my teaching and happier inside the classroom.

I have read books and continue to add to my library. The two I have really engaged with are called "Thinking for Learning" and "How Science Works". Both have made me reappraise my practice and what education is for. Whenever I visit London I go to Foyles as their education section is the best I have found.




In the South West the science learning centre and @Bristol hold free twilight events about 3 times per year to encourage teachers to come and use the facilities. There is always something to learn from these events.

I am on various mailing lists: STEMNET, National Science and Engineering Week, Edexcel, OCR, @Bristol and more. They send useful information so I don't need to search for it.

I have attended one teachmeet and contributed to another via video. Even taking part in distant teachmeets via watching the twitter hashtag gives something to reflect upon.

The National Big Bang Science fair occurs each March. I took my partner and step-daughter (you have to take a child) to the family day on Saturday. This was great CPD as almost all the companies related to science education were there, but not those trying to sell textbooks or online assessment packages. I am going again with a group of students and two members of staff. I really hope that they get something out of the day, I am sure they will.

I am planning to take part in an online training trial for the Yorkshire and Humber Science Learning Centre, although I haven't committed yet.

I am registered with the Schools Network and with TEEP, so get emails from them and can access their resources while I work at an affiliated school. I am also registered with the National College for School Leadership; there are a lot of good resources on their site and enough discussions to pose some questions and raise issues.

Lastly, as described in another blog post I too matters into my own hands and asked to be released by school to attend the ASE conference in Liverpool. I asked as early as possible in the year so there would be money available and I was granted permission. It was worth every penny and what I discovered will impact on my teaching for a long time to come.

Making your own opportunities does require a time commitment, but it has been worth the effort for me.

An Educational Philosophy?

On Tuesday 1st November I was set the challenge by @jwputt of writing my educational philosophy during the #addcym discussion on twitter.

In the past, when writing job applications I have split the personal statement/supporting letter into sections with sub-titles. One of those sections was entitled "philosophy". I would write:

I believe that learning is an invaluable skill for anyone to have. I actively encourage students to enquire about their subject matter; striving to make my classroom to be an atmosphere of “how?” and “why?”
I have worked tirelessly to promote a learning environment where students take responsibility for their own learning. This improved attitude has shown itself in the respect students' show to their class work and homework. I have used high expectations so that the students in my classes have a strong impression of what is expected of them both academically and behaviourally.
A major challenge obstructing achievement at the school I currently work at is low-self esteem. In order to combat this I make the students in my class feel valued and positively encouraged through the use of praise and impressing my unwavering belief in what the children can achieve.
In order to effectively learn, students require a solid foundation in numeracy, literacy and ICT. I plan lessons to involve opportunities to develop and build on these skills. The learning of key words is a main focus my teaching. I use ICT regularly within my teaching to help the students appreciate the applications of ICT beyond playing games.

I don't think that I ever considered why I taught science specifically, or the particular importance of my subject when I chose to become a teacher; I wanted to work with young people and not work in a profit motivated organisation. However, my main motivators have changed during my career: most recently I read James Williams' book called "How Science Works" and it changed my slant on teaching from seeing it only about helping young people but also recognising the importance of learning about science specifically. In between I have been inspired by learning to learn and teaching thinking skills and they skill colour what I do.

My current educational philosophy is to help young people understand the world around them. To do that I believe they should find things out for themselves, and experience the nature of scientific exploration. Teaching young people about the nature of what science is seem to me to be vital in an increasingly technological world. Solving the problems that humans have created for themselves is going to take people who can understand the science behind claims being made and their validity as well as people who have thinking skills necessary to solve problems in creative ways.

At the back of my mind when planning my lessons is how what I am doing helps my students understand the nature of science a little bit more. By doing this I hope I can build into them a natural curiosity that will help in more contexts than purely science.

What I learn from this reflection is that as I continue to teach my ideas and opinions grow and evolve. My next practical task is to understand STEM: how can maths, science and technology really work together to effectively, and more to the point, do they need to?


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Location:Rudgleigh Ave,,United Kingdom

Twitter and the PLN...

I come to blogging because of twitter. Many teachers on twitter have blogs and it is a very good way to share practice that cannot be described through 140 characters.

I had a twitter account for a long time before I started tweeting, but quickly got into it once I started following the right people. Now I follow anyone who is a teacher or trainee teacher and a lot of people who are related to education. Mostly I like to follow those in the UK, but there are a few very inspiring North American teachers who have twitter accounts too.

I have become good at filtering through the thousands of tweets in my twitter stream per day, usually only looking back over the past hundred or so. I can spot the avatar of the people and organisations that I am most interested in and tune into their tweets, gradually building up the people I follow has helped with this.

I believe that it took me a while to get into using twitter because I didn't know who to follow. I was trying to use the twitter recommendations and only found NASA and BBC news. Finding real people is much better.

So if I could only follow 10s of people instead of 1000, who would I follow?

@Bio_Joe
@Lethandrel
@cleverfiend
@Mr_D_Cheng
@NeedhamL56
@teachingofsci
@ViciaScience
@morphosaurus
@agittner
@asober
@57mason
@niamhirl
@maz_blaze90
@damianainscough
@DrDav
@Biolady99
@AnthHard
@deejbee
@cardiffscience
@Mallrat_uk
@123anatomy
@doc_gnome
@racheleppy

Would be my list of real people. They are all scientists and contribute to #asechat on Monday evenings.


There are another group who are ICT based and very much into blogging with their students. @ICTEvangelist, @ianaddison and @fraserspeirs would be a starting point.


There are also organisations on twitter. This is the part that I find the most useful: following what their latest ideas are and keeping up to date with the data being pushed to me rather than me having to look for it.

@STEMclubs
@Future_Morph
@RSC_EiC
@imascientist
@ScienceWeekUK
@TESScience
@GCSE_Science
@SAPS_News
@ScienceVoice
@ThePhySoc
@SciTeachJC
@scicast
@SexEdUKation
@planetscience
@OxfordEdScience
@ARKive

There are others, such as the department for education and the schools network. One can even follow Toby Young.

However, any science teacher new to twitter who starts with these lists should be able to build their "personal learning network" up quite easily from these starting points, and have no trouble in learning or re-learning something related to science education.