During our first week of school (not until next week) I am doing a presentation about Professional Learning Networks to other teachers in my county. I am going to focus on Twitter. So to start off on top above is how to set up a Twitter account and below that is a great video on how to use Twitter (no, it has nothing to do about getting married). I would suggest your watching it as it tells you how to do everything you'd want to do in Twitter such as set sending Tweets, direct messaging someone, following lists, getting help and on and on. If you prefer seeing it all written out, here is a great set of written instructions and below is a summary of them: To see everyone you are following (and your own Tweets), hit the ?Home? button. If you want to see your own Tweet, tap on the ?Me? link. If you want to see if people are enjoying and passing on your Tweets, go to ?@Connect.? If you hit ?#Discover,? an algorithm will promptly deliver you some people on Twitter to follow. When you are in the ?Home? tab, just below your picture it says ?Compose new Tweet.? Secondly we are going to look at lists of educators to follow. Ken Halla @kenhalla Cool Cat Teacher @letytijerina We Are Teachers @WeAreTeacher Larry Ferlazzo @LarryFerlazzo Eric Sheninger @NMHS_Principal Richard Byrna @rmbryne Shelly Terrell @ShellTerrell Next we are going to look at how to set up a hashtag and how to use it in class. As you might remember from my posts, my students have Tweeted the election returns, State of the Union, presidential debates and reviewed for the exams using hashtags. Below is a list of hashtags you might want to follow. Some other useful ones are #SSChat (social studies), #HistoryTeacher and #GeographyTeacher. To find a hashtag, type in the # symbol plus the name in the search engine in Twitter and the conversation will appear. If you want to be really blown away go here for the 300 most popular hashtags for educators. Educational Chats: #edchat, #schools, #lrnchat, #TT (Teacher Tuesday), #GlobalEd Technology Chats: #edtech, #elearning, #mlearning (mobile learning), #edapps, #gbl (games based learning), #islide2learn (iDevices & learning), #vitalcpt (effective use of tech in the classoom)
If you want to both follow a hashtag and Tweet at the same time, I'd suggest you use TweetChat. Below is a video on how to use it.
- Twitter Warm-up
So I always have a meet and greet on our first day of school, but tomorrow, thanks to @dougzywiol I am going more high tech (imagine that!) and having the kids Tweet their answers. To do that yourself you can either create your own hashtag...
- Twitter In-service
Tomorrow I will be doing an in-service on using Twitter in the classroom. My colleague, Doug Zywiol, joined my department last year having never used it before and attended my Twitter in-service. Now he is a force and will show you how to do warm-ups...
- 10 Tips For Using Twitter In Education
Steven Anderson, instructional technologist for Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in Winston-Salem, NC,offers 10 good tips for using Twitter in education in this article for T.H.E. Journal.. Some of his suggestions include: Find good hastags to follow--they...
- Popular Educational Hashtags
Now that Frank has me doing hashtags, I am glad I just found this Edudemic list of educational hashtags. Here are ones that can help you: The Most Popular Hashtags#edchat ? Education, worldwide (lots of US teachers). A really useful hashtag...
- Setting Up Your Twitter Account
Introduction to Twitter for Educators Last week I introduced my "teacher students" to Twitter by asking what it was. The first answer was that it lets people know what you are doing during the day. While that is an excellent answer for a...