This is a list of 30 recommended Scottish Twitter feeds. Note: this is by no means a ‘best-of’, and the order is unimportant. The list is comprised primarily of suggestions from the public, as well as some of our own choices.

There is increasing noise in the education world about the use of technology in the classroom. Does it have a place? Should it be used heavily in schools? Does improper use even stop children from learning?

For me the use of video analysis in teaching is, and always will be, an essential tool to improve teaching feedback and develop outstanding practice. As a link tutor within a PE partnership, I see feedback, and the effectiveness of feedback, as one of the most important factors in developing initial teacher training (ITT) students. I also believe this should not be limited to just ITT students. Videoing a lesson and watching it back, although uncomfortable at times, can have a bigger impact than any observation or learning walk that you will take part in. With video analysis, what you see is what you get and a lot of the time, the realness of what you see can have a profound impact.

Anyone who has worked with Early Years Foundation Stage will understand the importance of learning through play. Play-based learning is encouraged in primary schools and included on the curriculum, and parents use play as a means of teaching children when they are young. However are we missing a trick by completely eliminating play from lessons for older pupils? There will certainly be times when a traditional teaching approach is called for (when preparing for exams for example), but would our students show greater engagement, a deeper understanding of concepts, creativity and resilience if we also tried to embed new pedagogical techniques with them?

Deliberate questioning sparks curiosity, unlocks learners’ ideas and helps them to think deeply, gain clarity and make more sense of a range of topics, issues and concerns that are important to themselves, relationships, society and the environment - in short, the fast-changing world in which they are growing up. With the aid of a framework based upon Rudyard Kipling’s poetic “I keep six honest serving men” -  WHAT? WHY? WHEN? HOW? WHERE? and WHO? - lessons can become lively and interesting. Children and young people explore, examine and reflect upon both positive and negative aspects and viewpoints of matters, problems and values and then see where their delving takes them.

The school day is done. The classroom is empty. The various after-school duties are finished. Now time to focus on those ungraded papers, the lesson for tomorrow, the emails to send to parents about their children, the emails to send to colleagues about meetings in the week, and go home. However, the day is far from done. Pack up all of your things, head to the locker room, change into that athletic gear, and get ready for practice.

My job as a Year One teacher is many things, but it is certainly never dull! I count dressing up, leaving mysterious messages and generally making a bit of a fool of myself as all in a day’s work! Luckily, my colleague is almost as crazy as me and fully on board for the ride! Faced with a lively and very enthusiastic cohort, we wanted to end the previous school year with a topic which would really engage them. Thus we began our topic ‘Do monsters live amongst us?’ by hooking pupils into Claire Freedman’s book: Monsters Love Underpants.

Over the last 100 years in teaching, how much has changed? Could you take a teacher from 1915 and drop them into a modern classroom? Apart from the strange haircuts and unfamiliar clothes they’d barely notice the difference, because the majority of school is still lecture driven. The teacher stands at the front, disseminating knowledge to the students. Now undertake the same scenario but with a surgeon. Bring a surgeon forward 100 years and it’s a different story. In a modern operating room our time traveller would be overwhelmed with sights and sounds. This is because technology has revolutionised surgery.

I was watching a TV show with a medical aspect the other night; in it the doctor wanted to treat a patient whom the other characters didn’t like because he was a terrorist or something. The doctor said he had to treat the patient because he had vowed to ‘Do No Harm’, and not treating a patient goes against the Hippocratic Oath. My mind wandered during the TV show, as it often does when I’m at home in the evening, and I started to think about why teachers don’t have an equivalent. What if we had something similar, that we vowed to uphold even against conventional morality? What might it look like and how would it work in practice? What if we had The Pedagogic Oath?

People sometimes mistake the concept of pupil engagement for frivolous, time-wasting fun. In fact, in any school staff room it’s likely that there will be at least one colleague shaking their head sadly and muttering the word “Edutainment” when particular classroom approaches are mentioned. The thing is, sometimes that cynicism is entirely reasonable; sometimes a wariness about “play” in the classroom is absolutely warranted. Why? Because there is an overwhelmingly important distinction between inspiring intrigue and engagement in a topic or skill, and simply sugar-coating the work with a meaningless, superficial “fun” activity.