Twitter

What is Twitter? [[image:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/148/355899568_b62bacca5e_m.jpg align="right"]]
Twitter is a social media platform that allows you to share messages that are 140 characters or less. You choose who you "follow." Once you are following someone, their "tweets," or message postings, appear in your updates (similar to the News Feed in Facebook). You can send links to websites, pictures, etc. There are a growing number of educators on Twitter ready for you to gain insight and feedback from. While it takes some time and interacting to build your follower base, it's well worth it.

What do the funky signs mean?

 * @(someone's username) = Reply or Mention. You can reply to a tweet from someone or put the @ sign followed (without a space) by their username.
 * If you are replying to a tweet, there will be a link back to their original tweet underneath yours.
 * Both the reply and mention show up in a specially designated spot depending on what service they are using to see their Twitter stream.
 * When you reply back to someone, and it's the first thing in your tweet, it only shows up in the Twitter stream of those who follow both of you. For example, if my tweet starts out @bethstill, only people who follow both Beth and myself will see it. Anyone can still go to your Twitter page and see that tweet, though.
 * # = a hashtag. Hashtags are great ways to see what people are talking about relating to a certain subject.
 * For example, if you are interested in knowing more about educational apps for iOS devices, do a Twitter search ([|try here]) and type in #edapp to see what people are talking about relating to that hashtag.
 * Also know that many people will make hashtags up. One that I saw tonight was on a Tweet about how bad a baseball team had been lately. The hashtag was #prettysurethatisntgood.
 * **For educational purposes**, the best to find hashtags is on [|Cybraryman's site].
 * There are many different "chats" that go on in Twitter: Groups of people who teach/work in similar areas designate a specific time to all be on Twitter and talk about different issues that they are having or seeing. They all use a similar hashtag so all of the related tweets are easy to find. A great example is [|#ntchat, which happens on Wednesdays at 7:00pm CST.]
 * While you can use and search for the hashtag at any time, those times are designated (by whoever wants to!) as times when the larger group gets together to "chat."
 * See all of [|Cybraryman's hashtags here] and then go to [] and type one in to see what people are sharing. It's also a good way to find new people to follow.
 * Think you want to be an administrator? Check out [|#cpchat].
 * Another one that will be popular the last week of June is #iste11 for the International Society for Technology in Education's national conference.

Resources:

 * [|Nebraska Educators Posse] - a group of Nebraska educators on Twitter to follow
 * [|Twitter 101] (blog post) - [|Beth Still]
 * [|Getting started with Twitter resources]
 * [|Twitter 101](video) - Josh Stumpenhorst
 * [|Twitter 102] (video)
 * [|Twitter and Educational Chats] - [|Kyle Pace]
 * [|If you were on Twitter...] by [|Scott McLeod]
 * [|Reasons to Twitter in School]
 * [|I Need My Teachers to Tweet] - [|Dave Meister] (principal)