TeachersConnect Home Page: The homepage brings together posts from all over TeachersConnect. As you scroll down you will see rows of different types of posts. The top row shows the “trending” (most popular) posts, the following rows show the most recent posts from each community you are part of, and the last row shows unanswered questions. You can use the red arrows on the left and right side of each row to scroll sideways to view more of each type of post.

Top Navigation Bar: The yellow bar at the top of TeachersConnect contains the following buttons that will help you navigate around the site.

• Search Box: The search box allows you to search for topics or educators of interest to you. Just type in your search and indicate whether you are searching “contributions” or “members” before pressing “find”.
• Home: The home button brings you back to the home page.
• Contribute: The contribute button gets you started creating your own post or a question.
• Conversations: The conversations button takes you to your “conversations”, where you can start a new private conversation or continue an existing conversation with an individual educator or a group of educators.
• Notifications: The notifications button brings you to the list of your most recent TeachersConnect notifications. You can click on notifications to view the activity they relate to.
• Profile: The profile button brings you to your own profile where you can add information to tell other educators about yourself.
• Communities: The communities button brings you to the communities page where you can view the communities you have already joined and select new communities to join.

Interacting With Posts or Questions: You can click any post or question to view more and interact with it. Once you have clicked into a post or question you can press the “helpful” or “good question” buttons, or scroll down to the comment box to write and submit a comment or answer.

View A Community Page: There are many different communities of educators on TeachersConnect. You can view all of the posts in a community that you have joined by clicking on the name of the community in its homepage row or clicking the “view all” button on the right side of the row. You can also navigate to different communities by clicking the buttons at the top of the Communities page.

Create a Post: Create a post to share an idea, resource, lesson, or story on TeachersConnect. Once you have written your post you can choose the community you want it to appear in by changing the “audience” of your post. When you publish your post it will appear in the homepage row and community feed of the community you chose.  The educators who are part of that community will be able to see your post and interact with it. You can also attach up to 4 files to a post.

Ask a Question: Ask a question to get answers from other educators on TeachersConnect. Questions are the same as posts in that you can set your audience, attach files, and other educators can interact with them. They are different in that each new question will appear in the “unanswered questions” row at the bottom of the homepage until it receives at least one answer.

Profile: View your profile information: name, photo, number of people following, number of followers, and total number of contributions to the community. Privately view the impact you are making in the community, such as the number of members who have marked your contributions as helpful. You can view other teachers’ profiles by clicking on their name when reading their posts, comments, or answers.

Edit Profile: Update your personal information, teaching experience, education, and about me. Add any teacher communities that you belong to as well.

Your Connections Feed: View posts and questions exclusively from the people you follow. This is located under “My Communities” in the Menu.

“Helpful” Button (Thumbs Up): Click to let a teacher know you think their post, comment, or answer was helpful.

“Good Question” Button (Clapping Hands): Click to let a teacher know you feel the same way or have the same questions as them. After clicking “Good Question”, TeachersConnect will send you a notification when someone answers that question.

Answer Button: Click to type an answer to a teacher’s question.

Attachments Button: (Paper Clip) Click this while creating a post, question, or comment to add files or images.

Well-designed posts receive far more views, comments, and activity on TeachersConnect. To ensure your posts don’t get passed over, follow these simple guidelines and check out the example below!

1. Add a profile picture. Go to your profile, click edit profile, and edit your personal information to change your photo. Teachers will be much more likely to pay attention to your smiling face than an ugly robot!
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2. Before asking your question or sharing your thoughts, give a little context about your current situation and what motivated you to create this post. Then bold your question, idea or resource so no one misses it. Checking out posts that are currently trending on the home page for more ideas.
3. Title your post. Use the ‘TT’ or put your title in Bold to tell teachers what your post is about right off the bat.
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4. Break up large chunks of text with line breaks, quotes, lists, or bullets.
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5. Upload a photo! What’s the saying: “A photo is worth a thousand words”? Spice up your post with an image that relates to it.
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6. Include a document. Teachers love resources! If you have a resource to go with your post include it.

In the TeachersConnect community, teachers and education professionals from everywhere are encouraged to share thoughts, resources, questions, and answers. However, if you are a part of a specific community that has partnered with TeachersConnect and are looking to join your colleagues, here is how you can do it.

Steps for Joining a Teacher Community:

1. Navigate to your Profile Page
   Click the “Menu” button at the top right corner to access your profile and tools. Click the “Profile” button.
2. Edit Profile
   Once you are looking at your profile, you will see a button to the right of your name that says “Edit Profile.” Click it.
3. Add a Teacher Community
   Under the Teacher Communities section of your profile, click the “Add Community” button. Find your teacher community on the list. Read the description to make sure it is the right one. Click the “Add” button. You have now joined that Teacher Community. (If you have mistakenly saved the wrong teacher community and want to remove it, click the “Option” button next to the community’s name on your edit profile page, and click “Delete.”)
   Note: If you do not see your teacher community on the list, they may not have partnered with TeachersConnect. Contact a representative of the community/organization and ask about partnering with TeachersConnect.
4. View Your Teacher Community
   Click the “Menu” button at the top right corner again to access your tools. You will now see a tile for your teacher community under “Communities”. Click it to view posts and questions from members of that community. Your posts and questions will appear there as well.