Why I Created The Under 2,000 List

I get a sense that the Twitter world is becoming like any other social area in life. The “most popular” with the “loudest voice” gets heard!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter and all of the great people I have met and interacted with in that educational, social atmosphere. I’m also not ranting about my frustrations with not having 5,000 followers or more.

I just feel that there are thousands of educators with a small amount of followers that take the risk of sharing an idea, a lesson, a photo of their students doing great things, or something as simple as a “like” to another person’s tweet. And yet, they receive little to no response! The 200 “likes” don’t show up on the tweet. The total engagement numbers limp to double digits. Ultimately, they may feel the risk was not as great as the reward.

So many people with less than 2,000 followers have great insight, and unless we give these educators positive feedback for joining our Twitter educational community, they will leave. And leave quickly: never to reap the rewards of connecting with educators outside of their classroom or even outside of their local community.

As a teacher in my district that encourages Personal PD with a global community, I recently set up a group of four physical education teachers with their Twitter account to promote their classroom actions and to connect to the Physical Education Twitter world. In one week, they posted ten times. Images of students doing great physical fitness, students outside enjoying physical fitness, and a tremendous resource of a “Fitness Deck”. I was very impressed with how they took risks to develop their social presence. Of those tweets, they received four likes and two retweets. Not an overwhelming display of positive feedback.

Isn’t this similar to our students or teachers in our classroom and our schools? How many students or teachers say or do something great in which they receive little to no positive reinforcement? I don’t know an exact number, but if it’s one, we need to improve on our communication with those students and teachers.

My call to action!

Starting now, let’s respond to one, two, or three teachers in a week’s time who have less than 2,000 followers or are new to the tremendously, positive personal learning network of Twitter. Need a jump start as to who those people are?

Visit the Under 2,000 List, subscribe to it, and provide some positive feedback to tremendously talented educators!