Hi, welcome to this short slide show on Getting Twitterpated! My name is Miguel Guhlin and I am an administrator in K-12 education who blogs and tweets. You can find my tweets online at http://twitter.com/mguhlin

My blogging and tweets are all about education, technology, and leadership. I hope you will "get twitterpated" and join the conversating!

See you online,

Miguel Guhlin
Twitter: mguhlin

One of my least favorite movies from my childhood was Bambi. A few weeks ago, my children and I were chatting about movies for my 5 year old niece.

"What about Bambi?" I asked.
"What movie is that?" asked my son.
"You know," responded my daughter. "That sad movie where the deer are killed by hunters."

In spite of that, one of my favorite parts of the movie is Thumper the Rabbit's introduction to Bambi about the term "twitterpated."

I'm going to redefine that term about being overcome with romance and excitement to being overcome with excitement about learning and sharing with global learners.

Let's quickly explore 3 reasons why you'll soon be twitterpated when you plug-in to a network of connected educators around the world.

Are you willing to look silly when learning something new? Think of one time in your life when you felt funny learning something but pushed on and gained a benefit.

Let's share.

If yes, you may have a growth mindset, a concept developed by Carol Dweck in her book "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success."

Are you practicing a growth mindset that believes you can improve yourself through hard work and persistence? Do you see failure as a chance to improve yourself?

Fixed mindset = avoiding challenges, giving up when encountering obstacles, see extra effort as fruitless, and ignore useful feedback when it's negative, and threatened by the success of others.

Growth mindset - Embrace challenges,persistence in the face of setbacks, willing to work hard to learn something, learn from criticism, and find lessons & inspiration in the success of others?

If you find lessons and inspiration in the success of others, then Twitter is for you! Are you ready to step forward to inspire and be inspired as an educator?

You don't know how fast you can move until a bug lands on you and you notice. I'm not sure what it is, maybe evolutionary survival mechanism, but you MOVE FAST when a bug lands on you.

Do we move as fast to pursue learning, or do we slap it away as quick as we can? With Twitter, you can follow up on learning in the moment, sharing ideas. We all want to do what's best for kids and Twitter enables people to expand knowledge of what we can do in our classroom or office.

Twitter challenges us as educators to grow, it serves as a way to collaborate with others so as to impact student achievement.

Mark Ahlness, a Seattle Washington public school teacher, shared with me that his learning was limited by what his peers were interested in.

But it turns out that when Mark connected with a world of people, there were many educators who were passionate about Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) with online student writings in blogs.

Find people online that inspire you and see what they are sharing.

You can get a Twitter account for free online at http://twitter.com

Create the account using your district email account (you can always change your email address and/or username) with the intent that this will be your professional Twitter account.

Twitter enables 24/7 help and learning opportunities. You can use Twitter on your iPhone, Android phone, tablet or computer.

My favorite apps:
1) Twitter app. Works great.
2) Flipboard for reading Tweets with pictures.

You can get started with Twitter easily by simply searching on hashtags. This enables you to lurk, to look around and see what is interesting. Although one of the best ways to get into learning about new ideas involves sharing and reflecting on them, lurking allows you to quickly see what others are discussing.

I encourage you to give it a shot, and begin to get familiar with the flow of the learning conversations.

Start sharing what you are reading and writing with others. Although you are limited to 140 characters, you can add pictures and audio reflections (use Vocaroo.com to record yourself and then share the link via Twitter).

Consider using Twitter as a way to engage with others online...learn how to find lessons and inspiration in the work of others.