How To Use Twitter

(AND WHY YOU SHOULD)

Image Credit: www.jasonjordan.com.au

WHY TWITTER?

“Making professional connections via

social networking … result(s) in a lot of

great sharing of ideas and resources …

It’s like having a professional

development seminar at your fingertips

24/7 …”

(from “Using Twitter for Professional Development” by

Sarah W. Caron, 2011)

THE place to find and share resources, ask questions, learn about

innovations and even find a job.

LET’S “WATCH” TWITTER

If the link is inactive: go to

www.tweetping.net

Image Credit: www.mashable.com

Starting Out You will gain more followers and engage in more

interaction if ... You use your own name and include a

photo as your avatar. People want to know who they

are speaking with. You might be told to “hatch your

egg!” Ensure that you remain

active; send tweets

everyday. Even if it’s only

a handful.

Let me know if

you would like a

“shout out” i.e. if

you want me to

introduce you to

my followers.

The Twitter Home Page

Some Definitions @ All users of Twitter have a

“handle” or user name. It can be your actual name or an “alias.” e.g. mine is@connectedtchr

# A hashtag is used mainly for group chats. E.g. I am part of a group chat each Wednesday night with fellow History teachers. We use the hashtag #histedchat to tag our contributions.

DM is for “direct message” when you send a private message to the recipient’s chosen email address.

Some other terms …

RT this stands for retweet, when you decide to send a particularly relevant tweet to your own followers

MT this stands for modified tweet … where you have altered or added to a (re)tweet

#FF “Follow Friday” is used (only on Friday) when you suggest people to follow

Tweeps are your followers, your “Twitter Peeps”

Composing a Tweet Technically you have only 140

characters … but you are allowed extra for the recipient’s name and there are several ways to shorten any link you insert. If you keep to 120 characters you’re leaving space for MTs and RTs

You can insert photos, web links, videos and since Twitter acquired Vine, 6 second video tweets. “Periscope” will allow a “Twitter live feed”

Many people, myself included, use a third party Twitter management app which can make some of these actions easier. The most popular are Hoot Suite, Tweet Deck and Tweetbot.

Type in the available space

and the counter will count

down showing the characters

remaining. Edit if necessary

and then just hit the Tweet

button.

Reading and Responding

To “respond” you begin by clicking on the “Expand” option. A window like this

will open up and you then have a range of alternatives. “Reply” and “Retweet”

should be fairly obvious. If you “Favorite” a tweet, you can come back to it at

a later stage e.g. to click on the link and read the attached file.

Who Do I Follow? Most people start with a

celebrity like Stephen Fry but I’ve long since deleted him. You can have more than one Twitter account so @connectedtchr is just for my education PLN.

You can look out for #FF suggestions but you will find that your PLN will grow like all networks. Those who make the best use of Twitter go by the maxim “It’s not the number of your followers but rather the quality.”

You don’t have to follow others but can, for a time, simply be a “lurker” until you want to join in.

The following are some of the better education hash tags …

#edchat

#edtech

#elearning

#stem

The Twitterati of Education George Couros @gcouros (74000 + followers)

Angela Maiers @AngelaMaiers (125000 +)

Steven Anderson @web20classroom (114000 +)

Tom Whitby @tomwhitby (59000 +)

Richard Byrne @rmbyrne (78000 +)

And be sure to also follow:

@AusLessons @LarryFerlazzo @courosa

And, of course, @connectedtchr

HASHTAGS and TWITTER

ABBREVIATIONS A hashtag is a way to identify

a tweet on a specific topic e.g. #edtech #histedchat #STEAM #makered

If you use a 3rd party app such as TweetDeck, you can use the hashtag (as a “filter”) to follow just that conversation in a single stream

You don’t have to be restricted to the established hashtags … just make your own e.g. #confused

A few common abbreviations to employ

AFAIK (As far as I know)

HT (Hat tip/heard through)

ICYMI (In case you missed it)

IMHO (In my humble opinion)

SMH (Shaking my head)

TFTF (Thanks for the follow)

TIME TO TWEET

Image Credit: http://blogs.knoxnews.com