Thing 3: Twitter

I am not new to Twitter by any means. I've been using it since 2009, when I attended my first Harry Potter convention and the friends I met there and I then used it as a way to keep in touch. Back then, tweets actually appeared on your feed in exact chronological order and did not "thread."

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Twitter, but it is still my favorite social network (not counting Instagram). It's generally less invasive than Facebook and it tends to work a lot better, too. But I'm not a fan of chatspeak and am a big proponent of proper grammar, and Twitter tends to almost require you to use chatspeak and violate the basic rules of grammar. I also have a love/hate relationship with hashtags. If they're used for their intended purpose, which is to link various tweets together, then I like them. But it tends to drive me a little crazy when people #hashtag #every #word #oreverysentencelikethis.

Anyway, I have not used Twitter or other social networks in the library yet. My district has blocked Facebook, so any Facebooking would have to be done before or after school or on my phone. I'm not sure if Twitter is blocked, but if it is, it's a lot easier to type out a quick tweet on my phone during the day than come up with a Facebook post.

Just in the past few weeks, my district seems to be starting to encourage teachers to tweet about what they're doing in the classroom. They've even come up with hashtags. For example, tomorrow is Safer Internet Day, and we've all been encouraged to tweet using the appropriate hashtag about what our classrooms and schools are doing for the day.

And so I created a new Twitter account for myself. A professional, librarian type account. So far I've mostly just followed all the authors and librarians I'm also following on my personal account, but I'll need to follow them on my new account as well.

I'm excited to participate more in various lit chats and to share new ideas with other librarians. There are so many ideas out there and Twitter is a great way to share them. Tomorrow I'll tweet about what I'm doing in the library for Safer Internet Day and search the hashtag to see what others in the district are doing.

And, if you want to follow me, my new name is @SMRreadsbooks. I'm still not sure about the name, but when your name is as common as mine, the choices are limited.