Twitter Mentor Spreadsheet

The other morning my Blackberry started going nuts. I figured it was a bunch of spammers until I looked and saw that nearly all of them were from Kansas. A few hours later…..another group of 30 or so new followers.  I contacted one of them and she told me that there were about 150 students taking the class. I was thrilled at the idea of 150 preservice teachers learning from my PLN, but I also know the challenges that all new Twitter users face. In order to stick with it you must see a purpose. Sometimes the purpose becomes evident immediately while other times it might take weeks or months for it to become apparent. Most educators who stop using Twitter because they never see the true value in it. They never have that a-ha moment that makes it meaningful and relevant to them.

As the last group of K State students was signing up for their accounts this afternoon my phone was going berserk again. I could not help but wonder how many of the students would stick it out. How many of them will actually use Twitter? How many will experience that moment where they could never think of giving up Twitter because it has become part of what they do? I began to wonder if there was anything I could do to help them make that connection. All of a sudden it hit me. Why not try to connect members of my PLN with the students? We could act as mentors  and show them what we have learned by being part of a network. Within a couple of minutes I had created a spreadsheet and sent out the link to my PLN. Within 90 minutes we had 45 mentors signed up.

I cannot wait to see if the students come back to sign up to work with us.  I also hope others will take this example and run with it. Our PLN has so much to offer, but for the most part we are an untapped resource.  If you are a mentor I recommend sharing your email address so you can have conversations that are a little longer than 140 characters!

Maybe K State will send some of these preservice teachers to ISTE 10 in Denver?????