by Marcus Kubsch
Image Credit: Sue Scheff (Information extracted from IPTC Photo Metadata)
Twitter as a resource
You might wonder how 280 characters can be a useful resource in academic life but I actually learned quite a lot on twitter. It all depends on following the right people and topics that are relevant for your work. Search for those and follow them and your timeline will start to fill up with useful tips an tricks, links to great papers, or relevant information about scholarships or the job market. A recent example is how I discovered the BBC's graphics cookbook for R—a real great resource—by following #Rstats. Sharing a resource you discovered is also a great way to start posting yourself and thus giving back to the community.
Engage in discussions going on in your field
Well, you can discuss how e.g. the NGSS should be implemented at conferences or with you colleagues but you can also join the discussion on twitter at #NGSSchat. A great benefit of following and participating in such a discussion is the wide array of perspectives you get from people in all branches of the educational system. Try it!
Science communication
While we often discuss our work with our colleagues, we tend to discuss it less with people that are not in our field. However, in a world with growing distrust in science, it becomes ever more important to also communicate what we are doing and why it matters with the public. Share how a day in #Phdlife looks like or try to explain your work in a broadly accessible way like my colleague Alice in SciEd.
I hope this post has given you some ideas of academic uses of social media and encouraged you to explore the academic side of twitter. If you know a great social media resource please share it in the comments. For thought and suggestion about academic uses of twitter you can contact me via @MarKubsch.
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