Be Mindful of Your Twitter Followers

Twitter has been a fantastic resource not only for me professionally but also for our students to connect to a global community. I love the look on their faces when they send a tweet to an author, astronaut, or expert in a given field and get a response. We have used Twitter as a resource to learn and grow. It is a place to ask questions about our curiosities or collaborate with other classes on topics of interest. We share our work too in the hope that someone will learn from us! Twitter is a tool that helps us break down the four walls of our classroom and allows students to see possibility.

However, over the weekend I noticed I had close to 4500 Twitter followers and was curious to see who those people were. Sometimes my Twitter app on my phone does not show all notifications and I miss follows. Or in the haste of a day I might tell myself I will check that person out later and not always go back to it. As I went through the list of followers there were about 400 people I decided to block from seeing my account to protect students and their work. Twitter has less security settings than Facebook and Instagram when it comes to allowing people to connect.

It is important to be mindful of who you are letting into your Twitter world. Those of us at the forefront of using digital tools to connect must continue to model best practices for others. I decided to create a set of criteria about our Twitter followers. Educators, pre-service teachers, people I know personally, and educational companies through my work with MassCUE were the accounts I left. People with an egg head (no profile pic), zero Twitter activity in years, or missing identifying information and I did not know him or her in real life were blocked.  

Blocking Twitter followers does not make me an unkind person. I am trying to keep myself and students safe as we continue to navigate the world of social media. Anyone using Twitter should consider using a profile picture, background photo, and include information about him or herself in a bio. We also should be cognizant of who we allow to follow us if we are using the tool with students. I will continue to work on being a better monitor of this as my followers continue to grow.