Twitter—A Waste of Time or a Great Tool?

Presented by: Cindy Miller, CTE CoordinatorFrenship ISD

Agenda

• What the heck is Twitter?

• How did it start?

• How do I become part of this madness?

• Tweet? What is that?

• Learning to Tweet effectively

• Finding worthy people to follow

• Popular Twitter Clients

• Popular Add-Ons

• How Twitter is being used effectively in education

So, What is Twitter?

• Twitter is a free social networking and micro- blogging service that enables it user to send and read messages known as tweets.

• You are limited to 140 characters maximum• Blogging without the shelf life• Twitters are designed to provide little bursts of

information quickly that are not designed to be referenced in the future.

How Do You Get Started?

• Head over to www.twitter.com

• Creating an account is very easy

• Must have an e-mail account– If you do not have an email account, huge

kudos to you for tackling a Twitter class!– There is no limit to the amount of Twitter

accounts that you can have.

Twitter Screen

Send a Direct Message

Searching

Advanced Twitter Searching

• search.twitter.com

Advanced Twitter Searching

• Advanced

Search

Tweeting

• Tweet: an individual post

• RT (Retweet): re-telling someone else’s tweet

• @username: open message to a specific person

• Message: Direct message a follower (private)

Video: Twitter in Plain English

So, What Should I Tweet?

• Technically, anything you want• Think about your goal of using Twitter

– Inform? Entertain? Educate?– Quality is so much better than quantity– Case in point: Verizon Wireless Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14CKzskjn4s

• I personally follow the 1/3 rule:– Inform? Entertain? Educate?

Using Twitter as a Backchannel

• Popular thing to do at conferences and events• Usually users will create a separate Twitter

account and let people know they will be tweeting while they are at the event/conference session, etc.

• Missing an important event? Session you wanted to see filled up? I bet people are at that event tweeting about it!

How Do You find People to Follow?

• Most celebrities, News Organizations, Popular websites, etc. have accounts

Finding People in Your Field or Interest?

• www.wefollow.com• User generated Twitter directory• The front page offers an overview directory of

top categories and the corresponding top Twitter accounts– You can then search on more specific topics– You can also add yourself to wefollow by

sending a tweet to @wefollow followed by #topicitem so

• @wefollow #edTech #presenter etc.

Hash what?

• #Hashtag: to group and track discussions

• Will “tag” your Tweet to that specific word– #golf or #esc17tsc

• Many sites exist that will show you tweets based on hastags http://www.hashtweeps.com is one as well as http://hashtags.org

• Both sites will let you set up an area to continually search on this hashtag

• Is not used as much since Twitter started offering the Save Search feature

The #Edchat Hashtag

• Educators have started using #edchat to communicate with other educators

• Tuesdays 12 pm and 7pm Eastern are pre-determined times that the tag is used specifically to talk education but people have also been using it in all of the educational related tweets

• This also a great way to discover other educators worthy of following!

Keeping Track of it All

• The more people you follow, the tougher it will be to keep up with your Twitter feed

• Your Twitter page considers all tweets equal and does not allow you to organize the people and things you follow– Yet!

Twitter Lists

Other Ways to Keep It Organized

• There are many applications that allow you to Tweet as well as organize who you follow into appropriate groupings

• Some of the most popular which are listed at: http://twitter.com/goodies– TweetDeck: http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/– Twhirl: http://www.twhirl.org/– Twitteriffic: http://twitterrific.com/iphone/

TweetDeck

• http://www.tweetdeck.com• Allows you to update three services• Organize by group• Follow topics in real time and saved searches• Allows for multiple Twitter accounts• Mac and PC• Free! (currently)

Twhirl

• http://www.twhirl.org/

• Small compact Twitter client that sits on the side

• Supports multiple accounts

• Supports searching

• Free!

URL Shortening You Say?

• Most URLs would take up all of the 140 characters Twitter limits you to.

• Bit.ly is the Twitter default. The shortened information can be tracked as well and all URLs on your free account are kept on a page so you can see how many people clicked them.

• Makes the URL 25 characters• Sometimes Twitter will shorten the URL for you,

sometimes not. Wish I knew the reason.

Adding Photos to Your Tweets

• www.twitpic.com is the most popular

• Solutions for desktop and mobile devices

• Free

• Will keep track of all of your photos

• Supports Tagging

• People can also comment on the photo which will feed to your Twitter account

Taking Twitter on the Road

• Twitter will detect when a mobile device is hitting it and switch to mobile view. It is like most pages, clunky.

• If you have a smartphone, there are a number of Apps you can use to get the full Twitter experience, but recently “Twitter” has been added as a new free app in iTunes.

Twitter for Smart Phones

• Twitter for iPhone: http://www.itunes.com, Free• Twitteriffic for iPhone:

http://twitterrific.com/iphone, Free (ads)/$4.99• Twitterberry for Blackberry:

http://www.orangatame.com, donations accepted

• Ubertwitter for the Blackberry: http://www.ubertwitter.com, Free (ads)/$4.99

Another Reason for Taking Twitter on the Road

• Tweet Ups!• Where people from Twitter come together and

meet each other– Sadly most of the time they are together they

are tweeting away on Twitter• Very popular at events like conferences, new

product releases and conferences (hint hint)• I love how Mashable has an article on throwing a

successful Tweetup : http://mashable.com/2009/02/25/tweetup/

Twitter for Education

• Does your school have a twitter account?– Heck they should have more than one!

• Principal Announcements, Events, Sports, PTA, School Closures, General Information

• You can easily use a variety of applications (TweetDeck for example) that support multiple Twitter accounts

• It is a simple update and considered an important form of education. We should be using it for our parents, students and community

How did they do this?http://twitter.com/goodies

Twitter for the Classroom?

• So many uses!– Pictures of classroom activities to tweet to parents– Homework assignments– Random facts of the day– Communicating with Experts– Polls and Data Gathering– Round Robin Story Creation– Brainstorming– Follow Mentors and Stories– Any others?

Some Twitter Resources

• Twitter Fan Wiki

– http://twitter.pbworks.com/Apps

• All Things Twitter on Mashable

– http://mashable.com/category/labels/lists/twitter-lists.

• @Twitter started something called #appwednesday

– http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23appwednesday

• Twitter in business (still some very relevant information for education)

– http://business.twitter.com/twitter101

Before I finish this out, watch out for this guy!

Fail Whale

Questions