Wanna have some fun? You should see What Twitter Says About YOU. Even if you don’t have your own twitter account, your name could still be flying throughout the #twitterverse. What’s tweeted about you in 140, or 280 characters, may be revealing, to say the least. Already, I can guess what you’re thinking:

Why not just Google yourself? 

Of course, you should do that frequently, too. However, twitter has served a very unique purpose for me. By leveraging the power of the hashtag, I’m able to quickly search my own twenty-first century Dewey Decimal System, finding very specific teaching and learning experiences over the past five years.

WHY Educators Should Archive, Share, and Tell

In our “Here’s Why You Should Hashtag Your Curriculum,” Bill Ferriter and I cited three main reasons why you should also hashtag with purpose:

1. Build An Archive. You choose what you want to record with your unique hashtag. I’ve chosen to archive learning experiences thru hashtagging specific curriculum objectives, mostly K-5 North Carolina Science Essential Standards, and K-5 common core math–so far. The most under-estimated feature in twitter is not just the ability to archive specifically thru hashtags, but the ability to search your archive.
2. Share Education Ideas and Resources. Because teachers don’t get to visit each other’s classrooms or meet face-to-face to exchange ideas and resources, sharing thru hashtags is invaluable.
3. Tell Your School’s Story to your community–and beyond. The world will tell you that the education system is broken. I’m not buying that all the way. Many teachers are miracle workers, and they just need to celebrate the positive things happening in their spaces and learning journeys, specified with a curriculum standard or objective, classroom or school hashtag, one tweet at a time.

HOW To Search Twitter

Try it out. Start simple.

In the twitter search box found in your twitter account (our use mine) OR from twitter’s official search home here, OR from twitter’s advanced search home here, enter your name or twitter handle and one word. For example, I would search “@KyleHamstra love” and I could find all the tweets composed with those two words, posted by anyone in the #twitterverse. Results from searches like these may be revealing of your character. Do I love more than… dislike? Try searching your name or twitter handle, paired with any of these words:

• @YourHandle + Words of Feelings: like, love, dislike, hate, happy, sad, afraid, scared, angry, excited, terrified, overjoyed…
• @YourHandle + Words of Description: awesome, wonderful, good, great, super, fantastic, terrible, awful, huge, big, small, tiny… 
• @YourHandle + Words of Action: agree, disagree, learn, teach, goals, plan, future, doing, vision…
• @YourHandle + What would YOU add?

I quickly found this tweet from a few months ago by searching: “@KyleHamstra love”.

Dear #LittleH1, @LeannHamstra & I heard your heartbeat again this week. Love you! See you soon! #HamstraHighlights: https://t.co/am2mw9mwuW

— Kyle Hamstra (@KyleHamstra) August 19, 2017

If I were planning, teaching, previewing or reviewing with students, or sharing with fellow educators in meetings or twitter chats, I would search what I’ve contributed and hashtagged from specific learning experiences like this (see a few examples here):

• @KyleHamstra + Science Curriculum Objectives: #sci5E11, #sci5E12, #sci5E13, #sci4E23, #sci3E11, #sci3L21, #sci2P12, #sci2E12, #sci1L12, #sciKE12, #sciKP22
• @KyleHamstra + Math Curriculum Objectives: #math5NBT7, #math5G2, #math5MD1, #math5OA1, #math1MD2, #math2MD7
• @KyleHamstra + My Classroom Hashtag: #ddestem
• @KyleHamstra + My Former Team’s Hashtag: #ddeimt
• @KyleHamstra + My School’s Hashtag: #SwimFwd
• @KyleHamstra + My Hashtagging Curriculum System: #Hashtag180

If I were meeting with fourth grade teachers about how students could better understand how the “surface of the earth changes due to slow processes,” I’d start by twitter-seaching: “@KyleHamstra #sci4E23″.

Twitter-search "@KyleHamstra #sci4E23" for more NC 4th grade science resources about changing landforms. #hashtag180 #HamstraHighlights pic.twitter.com/turlW8LX0V

— Kyle Hamstra (@KyleHamstra) September 20, 2017

I want to recall how we’ve used @Flipgrid to help us record and share learning in our STEM experiences. I would search: “@KyleHamstra #ddestem #FlipgridFever”.

___ eats #ddegardens? Predict. Research. Explore. Observe. Investigate. Capture. Record. Share. #FlipgridFever #sci4L11 #sci5L23 #ddestem pic.twitter.com/thrOk3Du97

— Kyle Hamstra (@KyleHamstra) November 3, 2017

How did my fifth graders use @Seesaw to help them record and share their learning about how “global patterns… influence local weather,” I’d twitter-search: “@KyleHamstra #sci5E13″.

They just can't keep their hands off! Current-ly manipulating+@Seesaw-ing sea/land & mt/valley breeze, rainshadow models. #sci5E13 #sci5P31 pic.twitter.com/VkUzqi8wbu

— Kyle Hamstra (@KyleHamstra) March 28, 2017

Social media are used for a variety of reasons. As educators, we have the free opportunity to use twitter to celebrate learning and teaching on a daily basis. Let’s look out for learning opportunities in the world all around us every day. Let’s use the resources we have to leverage the positive experiences with our students and their learning. Let’s build and share an archive together. Together, let’s personalize the world of education–one purposefully-hashtagged, tweet at a time.