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How to Use Twitter to Grow Your PLN

How to Use Twitter to Grow Your PLN
For many people, Twitter conjures up the worst of the internet: disjointed, meaningless phrases, unrecognizable abbreviations, and endless drivel about where someone's getting their double mocha today. So, Why Tweet?!?! For the inquisitive educator, there are some jewels herein that can lead to stimulating discussions, new resources, and an ongoing supportive network. You just have to know where to look. To that end, here is a list of educationally focused chats that we recommend (listed by day): Chat for educators teaching 4th grade #4thchat Mondays 8pm ET/5pm PT/7pm CT Chat for educators teaching social studies #sschat Mondays 7pm ET/4pm PT/6pm CT Chat for music educators #musedchat Mondays 8pm ET/5pm PT Chat for ELL educators #ellchat Mondays 9pm ET/6pm PT Kindergarten Chat #kinderchat Mondays 9pm ET/6pm PT General education chat #edchat Tuesdays 12 noon ET/ 9am PT 7pm ET/4pm PT Chat for science educators #scichat Tuesdays 9pm ET/6pm PT Chat for arts educators #artsed Thursdays 7pm ET/4pm PT

Twitter Tips: for Teachers & Educators | eLearning Blog Dont Was Once people have found out I’ve been using Twitter for all of about 4 months now they think I’m an expert (I’m not, and do not profess to be) and keep asking me; what is it all about, then? Good question, and not one I’ve really been able to answer for myself, let alone answers for someone who hasn’t spent time trying different things to see if it works for them or not. So, in an effort to work through my own thoughts, and to provide something for others to benefit from, here are some ‘top tips’; Work out what you want to get out of Twitter. If you don’t do this, then Twitter will be a waste of time. if you are an eLearning specialist, or you are developing new mobile learning (mLearning) technology, or you just want to talk to people who like to run marathons, then these are the kind of people you should be looking for. You can put a picture of yourself in your profile, use it wisely! Share and share alike. Use URL shortening service. Use #Hashtags.

25 ways to teach with Twitter by Sonja Cole 6/4/2009 By: Twitter can feel like a strange new landscape when you first jump in. It is not always clear what its professional uses are, or what to post in 140 characters or less. But when you start to think of Twitter as a micro-blog (and not just a forum for the personal minutiae of people’s daily lives), you will find that Twitter can be a valuable tool for professional development. Here are 25 ways that teachers can use Twitter to ask for help, get lesson plan ideas, book and professional resource recommendations, connect with other professionals, and even host an online book club. First, a guide to Twitter shorthand. @username: creates a link to that user in your post.RT: Retweet, to copy someone else's post in a new update. 1) Ask for recommended books, lesson ideas, or teaching tools.Sample tweet: Can anyone share their successful SMART board lessons for 2nd grade? 2) Be sure to thank the people who respond.Sample tweet: @RickToone @evelynsaenz Very cool digital stories!

IM Configure your IM client for Twitter You can chat with online friends (bidirectional follow relationship). You don’t post tweet, you directly send message to you friend without publishing it somewhere. Treegger does not store any data, credentials or messages, all contents just transit between you and our servers using secure connection (TLS). A problem? Any XMPP Client For any XMPP client software you should use following setup: Jabber ID: [your twitter account name]@twitter (for example ‘jchasetg@twitter’) Connect Server: xmpp.treegger.com with port 5223 Allow plaintext authentication (twitter doesn’t provide any other authentication method yet) SSL/TLS (old style) required and selected Pidgin Configuration is exactly the same as Google Talk except: Screen name: use your Twitter name (here jchasetg) Server: twitter In advanced tab, enter ‘xmpp.treegger.com’ in the Connect Server box (be sure that server is still ‘twitter’ in the previous tab) Miranda Create a new Jabber account. Adium iChat

The Best Resources For Beginning To Learn What Twitter Is All About As regular readers know, I recently joined Twitter and have had a good experience with it, though I’m skeptical that it will attract a following among teachers beyond those particularly interested in educational technology (see My Verdict On Twitter). In that previous post, I some sites that I found particularly helpful to me as I began to “tweet.” I thought others new to Twitter might find it useful for me to slightly enlarge that list, and so another “The Best…” list is born. The title of each resource is pretty self-explanatory, so I’m just going to list them. Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Beginning To Learn What Twitter Is All About (Except for the first one, they’re not listed in any particular order of preference): What Is This Twitter Thing, And Why Should I Care? Nick Peachey writes about Building Your Twitter Network, with a focus on ELT/ESL teachers. 100 Tips To Be A Smarter, Better Twitterer (thanks to Diana Dell for the tip) The Top 7 Twitter Tutorials On YouTube

HootCourse Twitter for Teachers: A Guide for Beginners I just received the following tweet: “I’m an NQT. Heard about Twitter being great for CPD but have absolutely no idea how to use it – can you help?” I’m still quite new to Twitter but I hope that what I’ve learnt in my first few weeks will prove helpful to those of you even newer on the scene than me. Choose your name wisely Short and sweet: Tweets are only 140 characters long. Make it easy: Make your name both easy to read and to type. Have a uniform online presence: If you’ve already got a good social network elsewhere, using the same or a similar name on Twitter will help your other followers recognise and find you and increase the speed with which you’ll get going on Twitter. Sell yourself in your Profile A picture is worth a thousand words: Twitter is a friendly community and having a picture in your profile will help people to know who they’re talking to. Link to your Blog: If you have a blog, make sure you list it in your profile details. Build your network Talk to yourself! Eavesdrop

Top 20 Sites To Improve Your Twitter Experience "140-character status updates to a network of followers." That makes Twitter sound simple. But in fact, the social information platform has grown to be much more complex than its 140 character-limit suggests. The site not only connects people, but has also become an intricate information resource for everything from news to shopping deals. Yet in many ways, the site's actual functionality hasn't exactly kept up with user interactions. We've compiled a list of the top 20 third-party websites for making your Twitter experience more useful and easier to manage. Web Applications: HootSuite and Brizzly With its recent update and HTML5 support, social media dashboard HootSuite has become one of the most useful Twitter web applications not only for individual users, but teams managing several accounts. HootSuite enables you to update to multiple accounts at once, and supports Twitter, Facebook profiles and pages, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace and Foursquare. Hashtag Stats: TwapperKeeper

A guide to using Twitter for teachers Twitter seems to be the underappreciated stepchild of the social-networking world. Why use a site that’s solely dedicated to the 140-character status update when you can get the same functionality out of Facebook, Myspace, blogger — and so much more? But its simplicity is exactly what makes Twitter a useful tool — especially for the classroom. There are many ways that educators can use Twitter — both inside and outside the classroom. Here’s our guide to how to get the most out of Twitter: Getting Started Include as much information about yourself as you can. Managing Twitter 1. 2. 3. 4. Tools/links for Twitter Twitdom is a database that features hundreds of applications that can be used for Twitter. Twitscoop lets you know what’s hot on Twitter now. TweetScan lets you search for tweets around a topic, according to key word. TweetStats lets you chart your Twitter statistics, including tweets per hour, tweets per month, a tweet timeline, and reply statistics. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Has Inclusion Been Effective? How Can We Tell? #Edchat We are very gareful to Christopher Rogers (@MrR0g3rs) for this week’s #Edchat summary. It wasn’t the easiest of topics as not everyone involved in the discussion had had personal experience of this type of teaching. I think you’ll agree it’s a job well done! Thank you :-). As inclusion programs are adopted around the world it is important for us as educators to pause and reflect upon their effectiveness. Here are some of the main themes from the discussion: There is some level of confusion about what inclusion actually is. Here is a selection of some of the comments: @Aaron_Eyler: Effective inclusion is when you can’t tell who the “Inclusion teacher” is…. or the “inclusion students” @Parentella: What about students who are excelling, but can’t go farther because teachers teach down to them? @MZimmer557: sometimes inclusion classrooms might not include a certified. teacher but a CIA. is that still quality inclusion when a CIA is not “certified?” @olafelch: @shyj I don’t know.

Nine great reasons why teachers should use Twitter - Laura Doggett What’s the point of Twitter? Why should educators get involved? What difference does using Twitter make? Here are some answers that you might like to share. 1. Teaching can be a lonely business. 2. Whilst some Twitter users will not tolerate many overtly egotistical self-publicisers (some celebrities have come under fire for using the service just to broadcast banalities to their flocks of fans), there is no doubt that Twitter users have the potential to reach very large international audiences. 3. Excellent teachers reflect on what they are doing in their schools and look at what is going well in order to maintain and develop it, and what needs improvement in order to make it better. 4. Twitter is a great medium for sharing ideas and getting instant feedback. As a further example, I tweeted whilst writing this post: Within minutes various kind followers had responded with suggestions, including: 5. Sitting down with a newspaper is not a luxury I have the time to enjoy every day. 6. 7. 8.

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