The Power of Social Networks

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Yesterday was a great day.  Matt and I spent much of our time simply watching the #LoveMyHaltonSchool tweets roll in.  We laughed, we liked, we retweeted, we saw things that were happening in other schools and we talked about how to bring that greatness to our building.

And this is why we think sharing our best practices is so important.  We both work in a great school, with supportive colleagues and students.  But we can’t continue to improve as teachers if we only look within our building for inspiration.  We have to broaden our horizons by looking outwards.  Yesterday, everyone who participated by tweeting opened a window into their classroom or school.

Watching the tweets were fun, but we couldn’t help but wonder about the reach of the hashtag.  Was a small group of teachers just tweeting at each other?  Were we making an impact online or were we all just yelling into the void?

Well of course, there is an app for that.  We found a free hashtag tracker and the story it told was impressive.  By the end of the day 212 users had used the hashtag and sent almost 700 tweets.  At peak times, we were sending 115 tweets per hour...breaking that down a bit, that’s almost two tweets per minute.  Pretty impressive, but that’s not the best part.

Ask yourself, how many unique individuals do you think saw the #LoveMyHaltonSchool tweets yesterday?  Think of a number.

Was it over 100,000?  Because that is what happened.  Over 100,000 unique individuals saw tweets yesterday about why teaching and learning in Halton is amazing.  We think that, in and of itself, is pretty rad.


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