Blue Valley Ed Services Technology Blog

One of the hottest new tools on the educational technology front lately is Twitter. Twitter is best described as kind of a micro-blog for your life, similar to if you write a blog. The difference between using Twitter and writing a blog is that in each twitter post you can only type 140 characters. Talk about short and to the point!  Have you ever been on Facebook where up at the top it says “What are you doing?”. Twitter is like a “What are you doing” network that you stay connected with all day.

On Twitter you can talk to others about what you are interested in, sharing articles or thoughts on random topics throughout the day. When you “follow” someone, it means you want to see their updates in Twitter.  Eventually as you use Twitter more you develop a network of people that will follow you as you follow them. It’s like an online network constantly at your fingertips!  Here are some quick “tips” on how to start using Twitter:

• Sign up for an account on Twitter. On your profile page, be sure to include your website if you have one or just a fun description of yourself to let people know what you are interested in. People will look at your profile to see whether or not they would like to “follow” you and be your friend. It helps to have a little profile written about yourself!
• Next, pick a bunch of different people you would like to follow to get the feel for what being on Twitter will be like. Here are some favorite people I recommend: 
  • plazabuzz (a tweeter from the plaza in K.C. who tweets about all things Plaza!)
  • newmediajim (camera man for a major news outlet)
  • lizbdavis (an educator from MA who is a strong technology blogger)
• Need others in your network? You can also check out this Spreadsheet of Educators that are on Twitter
• Start tweeting! Here is the basic terminology you need to know.
  • A “Tweet” is what a post on Twitter is called. 
  • If you want to speak directly to someone, you can DM or direct message them (on the right-hand menu in Twitter). This will allow you to send a message to them that only they can see. 
  • To reply to someone but you don’t care if others see, just hit the arrow next to their tweet and it will allow you to reply.  You will also see this referrred to as @. For example, if i were to send you a message and you replied to me, it will show @lesleyheizman and then your message. 
  • The # sign is what is called a hash tag within Twitter. Hash tags are used to tag tweets into certain searchable categories. You will often see people at conferences who will use a certain hash tag to tweet about what is happening at a conference. 

Once you get comfortable with Twitter, you might want to download a widget that allows you to use it on your desktop. My favorite is called Twhirl, which is a software you can use that sits on your start menu bar and shows you Tweets throughout the day. 

Still confused? Here are some great resources to get you started:

Great Links to Explore about Twitter Wiki
Getting Started with Twitter Screencast by Liz B. Davis
Great Tweets Project for the month of March
Twitter 4 Teachers Wiki