Oct 21 2009
Twitter guide and my favourites
Due to the incredible popularity of twitter globally, more guides are being written every day. I have had to update my teacher twitter learning object twice, due to the twitter interface changing. I also have not began to scratch the surface as far as handy twitter applications are concerned, but then I discovered this comprehensive guide to twitter from Makeuseof which always gives a down to earth perspective and look at tools and gadgets.
My current twitter tools that I am using are:
As I have various alter ego’s (@maggiev @schoollibrary @hogsback @mathslitteacher- The last 3 are collaborative), this web based tool is really very handy. You do not have to install a programme on your computer as it sits in your browser. You can keep track of all your personas and create separate streams which helps if you are following a great deal of interesting people. You can create a stream group by adding followers or hashtags. For instance, you can create a stream to follow the learners in your class. Another advantage is that you can keep track of your tweet stats with detailed graphs and stats (always very interesting from a maths point of view)
My Diigo auto- bookmarkmarklet to twitter
Where twitter is the mouth of my online learning, Diigo is the heart and as it has an auto twitter tickbox, I can automatically post my bookmarks to twitter on the fly by just ticking the box. All you have to do is to install the diigo toolbar and click on bookmark. The rest is seamless. Very handy.
Twibes (www.twibes.com)
Is a grouping tool and comes in quite handy when you have meetings or workshops. Previously I swamped my poor following with workshop/meeting tweets. I am sure not all my social media and edtech followers are interested in mathematical literacy and the hassles we are having with assessment, so twibes makes it possible to create an interest group around a specific hashtag and use it as a seperate backchannel.
Backing up tweets (http://printyourtwitter.com/)
Tweets are only visible for a period of time and it is therefore very important to back it up/print it. I do this once a month and also back up my favourite tweople’s tweets! This makes for some great bedtime reading!
But let me introduce you to this great guide for a few more (very comprehensive) step by step pointers……..
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
Thanks for the link! I spent a few hours last night with a group of teachers introducing them to the educational power of Twitter. They got the concept but aren’t very familiar yet with the service itself. I will forward them this blog post so they can have a look at the Complete Twitter Guide. It will be very useful!
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