Pre-K Tweeps Play Well with Others by J.M. Holland

One of the things we do really well in the early childhood professional community is play well with others. That must be why the hashtags of the early learning communities: #ece #preschool and #prek help show active and engaged communities. If you use HooteSuite or Tweet Deck to use Twitter, you can follow all three of these tags. Under the #ece tag, you will find a professional/practitioner angle of the field. There, teachers post interesting articles, organizations like @NAEYC post useful resources and many of the early childhood foundations post reports and advocacy opportunities.

For example @janetlansbury recently posted: Interrupting play to teach babies letters & numbers is like painting a house before the foundation is built. http://bit.ly/bXOnsH #ece

Under #preschool there are a mix of child care providers and early childhood educators who post great classroom activities and giveaways. It’s sort of like a virtual version of the NAEYC conference with vendors, professionals and parents. Sometimes home school posts crossover into this stream of information. This community, largely untapped by school teachers and professionals, provides new ideas and a new perspective within the #preschool community.

@tweetmeme Have Fun Playing with Strawberry Shortcake Online Preschool Games http://bit.ly/brVPFd #strawberry #shortcake #preschool #game

Finally, there is the #prek Twitter stream. There can be crossover with the other two streams, but the #prek tag is primarily focused on public pre-k and policy, thanks in part to efforts of education advocacy groups like @PreKNow.

Here is one of the recent posts:

RT @NAESP: Massachusetts encouraging #prek teachers to get college degrees. Less than 1/3 have them now. http://bit.ly/9xZdWN #ece

Comments

[Liz]

I also use the hashtag #ecse for "early childhood special ed" in addition to #ece.

It was more active earlier in the year.