Summer 2017 Learning Series-Making The Most Of Twitter Chats

For the next several weeks I’ll be sharing posts that you can use for your summer learning. School may be out for many but the learning we do as educators can last even outside the classroom. To start we will look in-depth at Twitter chats and how you can participate in real time or whenever you want. Next we will examine some ideas on how to get the most out of any conference you attend this summer or beyond. We will then move to some non-educational books that you can use to grow as a learner and a professional. Then I’ll give you some ideas on how to better engage parents this upcoming school year. Finally we will finish the series by looking at some new and exciting tools to try in your classroom. Each post will offer up some basic information along with several learning challenges you can undertake. Happy Learning!

Making The Most Of Twitter Chats

If you remember back to my post on hashtags we talked about how hashtags can be great sources of learning. When you begin to look at hashtags you will find some end it "chat." That means there is an actual Twitter chat that goes along with that hashtag. 

What is a Twitter chat? 
In it's simplest form, it’s a set time where folks get together and all post using the same hashtag. Most times there are moderators and set questions. Each chat works a little differently. But the basics are all the same. 

As one of the founders of #edchat I get a lot of questions about the what, where, when and why. So here is everything you need to know (or wanted to know) about #edchat and chats in general. 

The History of #Edchat
#edchat started out of a series of conversations between myself, Tom Whtiby and Shelly Terrell. Tom is a bit of an instigator and likes to push people's thinking about various topics in education. One day he was asking several of these thought-provoking questions and he was getting comments from all angles. He turned to Shelly and I for help. Afterwards, he suggested we needed a hashtag to make sure we didn't miss anything. Shelly suggested a weekly format where anyone could participate and I suggested we have the community vote on what we would talk about. And thus, #edchat was born. We had our first real chat in July 2009. And we have had one every week (except for a break at Christmas) ever since!

The Basics
To participate users need only add #edchat (or another chat hashtgag) to their tweets. We have organized chats every Tuesday. The main chat is at 7pm EDT and lasts an hour. Polls are posted by me (@web20classroom) on Sunday afternoons and voting ends Tuesday afternoons. The highest vote getter is our topic for the week. For other chats the moderators or participants will post the the topic and all the questions ahead of time. 

Following Along
You will need a way to follow the conversations. Many folks use a third-party Twitter client like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite and have a column set up to search for #edchat so they see all the tweets during the conversation. Others use a service specifically for chatting like Tweetchat to follow the chats. These work every well and will auto include the hashtag when tweeting, which can be handy. Another awesome service is the Twitter Chat Dashboard from Participate. But more on that in a moment. 

Afterwards
The archive is usually posted by the next day and it includes all the tweets during the hour time span. Archives of all chats are up here and are viewable any time. (To be honest, I usually have to go back to the archive to read up on everything that happened.) Archives are a great after the chat. Don’t just tweet and not read the archive. You can’t see all the great ideas and resources that are shared when you are chatting. So the archives are there for you to go back to and grab those when you need to. 

Advice
You can't follow every conversation during #edchat or any chat really. We average about 200-300 active participants a week and over 500 tweets for the hour. (Most of the time those numbers are much, much higher.) So, following everything is nearly an impossibility. We recommend tossing out an idea or two and see who latches on. Or just engage with someone(s). Everyone, for the most part, who comes to #edchat is open minded and wants to discuss what the topic is and offer up their thoughts on it. So push someone's thinking or better yet, have yours pushed back. 

Summer Challenge

1. Head over to the Official Twitter Chats Calendar at Participate. There you will find 100’s of chats, broken down by day and time and a description. Before you participate in the chat, check out the archives of these chats. What have they been talking about? Is there anything interesting to you and your learning?  It’s a good idea to do some investigative work ahead of time. 
2. Find a Chat to participate in. The beauty of using Participate is you can jump in right there from the calendar. Once it’s the day and time of the chat join the conversation. 
3. Visit the archive of the chat you participate in or other chats that may interest you. Look at past topics and questions. What did they talk about? Can you find anyone new to follow? What resources were shared that you could use in your classroom next year? 

Fast chats not your thing? Looking for something more laid back? Slow chats are gaining in popularity. The concept is the same. There is a hashtag that everyone follows and uses in their tweets. But instead of everyone getting together at the same time folks participate when they can. No need to have a special Twitter client or anything. Just send your tweet when you feel like adding to the conversation. Slow chats are great for busy folks who still want to learn but don’t have the time to take part in the real-time chats. Book talks, reflection questions, planning for next year are just a handful of the ideas for a slow chat. Don’t find one you like? Start your own!


Twitter chats and hashtags hold a tremendous amount of learning that you can’t really find anywhere else. There are so many topics and ideas that anyone can find something that can help with their learning this summer. Take some time and take part in a real-time or slow chat!

A New Year And A New Way To Twitter Chat

After being involved with the creation, participation and evolution of one of the largest hashtags and Twitter chats around (#edchat) I always hear the same feedback wherever I go. Things like:

• I like the chat, but it’s too hard to follow. 
• Is there a pause button so I can slow it down and read what everyone is saying? 
• There’s a lot of great information but the archives are difficult to search to find what I am looking for. 

And over the years, there have been many suggestions that we and others have offered to help participating in these necessary learning events easier -  and the experience better. These suggestions have included creating specific columns in apps like Tweetdeck and using chat specific sites like Tweetchat. But there wasn’t really one place where educators could go to have a better chat experience...

Until now.

The folks over at Participate Learning have created Chats, a new platform to help anyone participate, follow or catch up on their favorite Twitter chats. As well, Chats is integrated with everything else you can do with Participate Learning, including finding vetted resources, creating collections around topics or lesson plans, and collaborating with others on resource suggestions and how to incorporate in instruction. Here is a Medium post from their CEO that explains why the built Chats.

It works like this.

Head over to their Chats page and pick the chat you want to participate in (live or after the fact). They have over 150 listed, with plans to add more as well as a place to suggest one you’d like to see there. Connect your Twitter account or use your free Participate Learning account and wham-o! You see all the things to make your chat experience better. No only are the Tweets there (that you can scroll through at your leisure), but you have a list of current participants and a whole box of nothing but the resources being shared. You can tweet right from the Chats page, Retweet, Favorite, Reply and other things available in Twitter clients.

So imagine, you have gone through your chat and you want to see the blog posts, websites, apps and more that were shared. Rather than going through the tweets, Participate Learning Chats gathers them all for you right there. Now you can combine those resources with the power of Participate Learning and send them to a collection to share with others, or come back to later.

And it’s not just resources either. You can create your own archive of the chat for any time length up to four hours, and save what you need to share it or come back to later.

What’s great about all this is you don’t even have to be in a chat. You can use these features any time. We know that hashtags are a great way to share information and there is awesome stuff being shared all the time. You can visit Participate Learning Chats and have all the access to the tweets, participants, resources, archives and sharing features.

My only addition I think would be great here would be a calendar to know the dates and times of all the chats listed (and the folks at Participate Learning tell me that is coming really soon!). The Education Chats Calendar also has that information so you can head there before participating.

So head over to Participate Learning and check out their new Chats feature. Use it for your next Twitter chat and let me know what you think!

Summer Learning Series-Starting A Classroom or School Twitter Account

This is the seventh post in my Summer Learning Series. These are short posts with tools, tips and resources for you to try something new this summer or something you can take to the classroom in the Fall. First was Collaborative Learning With Edmodo and then we followed up with Learning With Hashtags. Then we looked at TED Talks. We moved on to Twitter chats. Then our last post looked at some pretty neat things you can do with YouTube. Last week we  took a look at Diigo and how to curate the information you are finding this summer. Today we will examine the things to consider if you want to use Twitter in your classroom or your school in the coming school year. 

While Twitter is beginning to catch on with many educators, schools are still lagging in their adoption of the platform. But let's think about it. Twitter is a quick and easy tool to let the entire school community know what's going on with you and your students. Updates can come from anywhere and users don't have to have a Twitter account to follow along.

But where do you start? What are some things to consider? Here is my primer and some advice for schools (and districts) that want to start using Twitter.

Think First-There are a few questions you and your team (and it should be a team) will want to ask and answer before you jump in:

• What do you want to do with this account? What do you hope to accomplish? What do you want to communicate? So, you are going to have a Twitter account. Great! Why? What do you want to tell people? The possibilities here are really endless. But think beyond the basic stuff like picture day and what's for lunch. Consider taking pictures of kids doing collaborative projects or highlighting staff of the month. It can really go beyond all the regular communication and show the community what your school (or district) is all about.
• Who will be in charge of the account? Will there be just one person who will post or will you have multiple people who post? This is all situation dependent. I would say more than one person is great but too many and things can get out of hand and duplicate information could easily be posted. Keep it simple and experiment to find what works for your group.
• Will you follow anyone? Again, this is situation dependent. You may want to follow other schools and the teachers in your school but will you follow parents? Students? Community members? If you are just going to be broadcasting following becomes less of an issue. If you want to facilitate interaction then following is important and your group will need to decide some guidelines on who to follow.
• If someone sends you an @ message, will you respond? Often times your account will get mentioned or someone will send you a question. Your group will need to decide how to handle these questions. My district has a Twitter account but it is a one way conversation. It rarely will respond to questions from the general public. I believe it should be interactive. So take time to get back to folks who need information from you. 

What's In A Name-Now you are ready to set up your account. You will need an email address that is not already associated with a Twitter account already. If you can have a generic email set up by the district that is the best way to handle that. Otherwise you will have to find an email address to use. (You could always set up a dummy gmail address as well.) The email address is used to confirm the account and sent notices of DM's and new followers and such. You will want to pick a name that is easy to remember and is your school's brand. This is the point where you will define who your school will be on Twitter. Remember though, users only have 140 characters to tweet with and if your user name is @RonaldReganHighSchool that doesn't leave a lot for others to tweet with. So maybe you go with @RRHS. Adding your location like town or state doesn't hurt either. Just keep it simple. And remember, there are several hundred million Twitter users so don't be disappointed if your first choice for a username is taken. Get creative and find something that can become your brand.

Who Are You- A profile will go a long way in letting people know who you are. This is the place you can put in your full school name, location, description and link to your school website. You will also want to put in a picture, either of a mascot or school symbol. That helps other users identify, quickly, who you are.

Hashtags- A good idea is to also come up with a hashtag. This will allow you to track conversations even if your account is not mentioned in a tweet. So for example we use in our district, the initials as our hashtag, #wsfcs. The hashtag is good because classes and teachers can send tweets and still reference your school with out mentioning you in the tweet. You can then collect them and retweet them as you see fit. And you don't have to follow everyone either to see what folks are saying. If you have monitors set up near your entrance you can use a program like Twitterfall to display all the tweets coming in on your hashtag. That might also entice folks to check out your Twitter account and learn more about your presence there.

Promote- The account does no good if no one knows about it. Let everyone know. Put a widget on your website so every time folks visit they see your updates. Tell parents about it in mailings home. A simple "Follow Us On Twitter" and a link will go a long way into getting folks to see what you are saying. You may also want to make some videos on how to find your updates and what you will be using your account for.

But I Don't Want To Be On Twitter-You may find resistance to the idea of a school Twitter account because folks don't want one of their own. That's cool. They don't have to have one. The easiest way to follow updates is to have their own account but they can also subscribe via the RSS feed found on your profile page, subscribe through SMS (text) messages on their phone (they have to have an account for this) or they can add the Facebook widget to their page and see the updates every they visit. And remember, you should have the widget on your school webpage so there are many ways to see the updates without actually your community using the service themselves.

There are some other basics you will need, especially if you haven't Tweeted before. Check out my Twitter In Education Livebinder for the basics.

So this summer, if you haven't already, take the time to get a school-wide (or district-wide) Twitter account set up and help connect your school to the community. And if you can think of other things to consider or something I might have left of leave me some comments below.


Image From Flickr CC spencereholtaway

Twitter For Little Folks

Yep, another Twitter post.

This time, I want to focus on another popular question I get.

"If Twitter says you have to be 13 to use Twitter, how do I use it in my elementary classroom?" (See the Update below.)

Great question!

Twitter's Privacy Policy says each user has to be at least 13 in order to have a Twitter account. This is to comply with privacy laws and non-collection of data of children. So the age restriction eliminates the ability for just about every elementary student to have a Twitter account.

But there are ways you can bring the idea of Twitter into your classroom.

Recently I was traveling around to a few schools in my district looking at our 1:1 pilot. I walked into an elementary classroom and saw the image at the top of this post. Around the room I saw various sizes of pieces of paper with kids writing on them with @ symbols, what appear to be hashtags and other parts of the Twitter vernacular.

Paper Tweets.

The students posted what they were learning (in roughly 140 characters) as a way to summarize their learning after class each day. But they were also using good grammar, and learning about all the ways that Twitter works.

Each one was hashtaged so they could be organized in to different places around the room. After they were posted, kids could examine the "timeline" for other ideas on how to solve problems or to answer questions that were posted from say, the language arts lesson.

Students also have profiles around the room so they are learning about digital footprints, in that they are posting only what they are comfortable letting others know about them. And they learn about location technologies and other parts of being a good digital citizen.

Another way to use Twitter in the elementary classroom is the method I use with teachers all the time.

Twitter Search

Events are unfolding in real-time and being covered in real-time by the folks on the ground. So while students can't use Twitter accounts themselves to communicate they can follow along using Twitter search for event hashtags or key terms. Or they can display the classroom Twitter account to see what is happening in the world. History doesn't happen in books any more. So why learn about the world from something static?

What other ideas do you have to use Twitter in the Elementary classroom? Leave some comments below.

*Update-I had a few folks contact me about the Privacy Policy. Twitter does not ask for age. So it is possible to use Twitter under the age of 13 but with the consent of a parent. The ideas here could work great if you didn't want to go down that road or if it was blocked or for another reason.

The Most Common Questions (And Answers) I Get About Twitter

A while back I wrote a 3 part series on Twitter. In Part One I shared how I do Twitter PD, which might not be the way you think. In Part Two, I crowdsourced what some folks on Twitter wish they had know before getting started. And in Part Three I shared some of my tips tricks and secrets.

I am revisiting the tips and tricks section because a few things have changed, or been added to and I have some new ideas I want to share.

Profiles-One of the Top 5 questions I get asked is about profiles. Should I use my name? Should I put my location? How much information should I share? The answer is...it depends. I use my name and location and specific information in my bio because they are all part of my brand. (And I learned early on I didn't want to be confused with another Steven Anderson who isn't exactly the nicest guy. Another reason why I use Steven W. Anderson too.) Certainly a first name helps be a little more personal. And you might only want to share your state (or province or country). And with your location, watch out for apps that update your location every time you Tweet. That changes your profile with your exact GPS coordinates, that a simple Google Search on those will show you exactly where you tweeted from. I also include information in my bio that tells a little bit about me. It's information that I am comfortable to share with anyone and anyone reading it knows what I do and the things I am interested in. I also use a real picture of myself. So in case we run into each other you can say hi! Bottom line, if you feel comfortable sharing it, share. If not, share what you feel comfortable with but try to put at least that you are an educator or interested in education and at least change your profile picture to a cartoon avatar. It helps looks less spammy.

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers-How did you get to 50,000 followers? How do I get there? I rarely talk about numbers and am often humbled by the connections I have made via Twitter and the opportunities I have had because of it. And while the numbers are what they are, they don't define how I use Twitter or what I do while I am there. I am still as likely to post a really great blog post as I am a picture of the most awesome daughter ever (that would be mine in case you were wondering). If I loose some, ok. If I gain some, great. For me and I tell people too, its about quality over quantity. You should follow someone if they provide value to you or add a voice you need to hear. If they follow back that's a bonus. You will grow your audience and your brand as you go along. Don't join Twitter to get a huge number of followers. If you are, you are doing it for the wrong reasons. Do it because you want to learn and share and grow.

Should I Follow Everyone? Well, again, that depends. I certainly don't because I just couldn't keep up. You should follow those that you find add value to your learning but you should also follow those that push your thinking and who you might not agree with all the time. There is no magic number or ratio (although some sites will try to tell you there is one). It's all up to you to decide what your comfort level is. There are many people I follow who don't follow me back and hey, that's cool. I can still learn from them. Again, I am in it for the learning.

How Do I Find People To Follow? Easy young grasshopper! Hashtags. I've written about the benefit of hashtags before but the basics are this. When you are starting you either heard about this thing called Twitter from one of your teacher friends and you joined, following them and a few others or you did some PD where everyone created an account and everyone followed each other but no one really knows what to do now. This is where hashtags can be your best friend. There are so many great educational hashtags and people tweeting on those hashtags it's easy to find people to follow. (And new content to share too.) (Check out this great list of Educational Hashtags.) The other great thing you can do is look at who those people are retweeting and mentioning. They might provide some value too. And don't be afraid to follow for a while and then unfollow. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Do I Ever Sleep? Sure do. Naps are great too :)

What other question do you have? Leave some in the comments and we will see if we can get them answered.


photo credit: Scott Beale via photopin cc

Some Fantastic And Fabulous Ladies To Follow On Twitter

The other day, some one sent me a link to a list of folks to follow.

10 Great Stars To Follow In The Twitterverse

The post lists these reasons for these users:

• They are always active, but never overwhelming on your twitter feed.
• They will challenge you to Think and Reflect – and push you to grow professionally
• They will provide resources and guidance
• They focus on Technology and Best Educational Practices
• They are all Unique, Practical and provide Authentic Leadership

Super reasons to follow anyone. 

I am actually on that list, which is pretty humbling. 

But this isn't about that. 

This is about the response to that post I got on Twitter. 

Several folks asked me, where are the women? 

You know, you'd have to ask the person who wrote that piece. 

And then I got to thinking about it. I didn't even notice when I looked at the list that there were no ladies on it. I was just looking more at who is listed and not really the gender. And maybe that is a problem with me or maybe just a honest oversight. I don't really think about who to follow in terms of finding a balance in the number of men vs. women. I look more at the quality of the person, what they do and what they share. 

But nevertheless, I think it only fair to post a list of Fantastic and Fabulous Ladies To Follow On Twitter. They definitely are all those bullets above, and they are pretty awesome too. Ladies I admire and all I want my daughter to grow up to be like. 

Are these all the ladies on Twitter I would recommend to follow? Heck now. There are 1000's more. But that post would be much too long. The point is there are lots of great people on Twitter to follow, boys and girls. Find those that add value to you and to your learning. Lists are helpful and can be a good place to start, but don't leave your network in the hands of someone else. 

Some More Twitter Chats Worth Checking Out

It's been almost 1 and half years since I last wrote about my favorite Twitter chats. Since then many have come and gone, some have changed and some new ones have emerged worth checking out.

First, to participate you don't need a Twitter account. Chats are a great way to passively learn with lots of people. I am a big believer in the power of the network. And while eventually you will want to jump in you don't have to at first. Head over to search.twitter.com and do a search for the hashtag of the chat. (Not sure about hashtags. Not worry! Here is a post all about them.)

Of course if you want to interact and join the conversation, you are gonna need a Twitter account. (Not worry about that. I've got you covered there too. Check out my Twitter Livebinder to get started.) You can use your favorite Twitter client like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite and set up columns that will search for the hashtag for you. Or you can use some websites built specifically for chats on Twitter. Tweetchat and Tweetgrid are 2 of the most popular. They are great because to join the chat all you need to do is include the hashtag. These sites include it for you so you never forget.

So what about the chats? There are lots and lots. You can see on this spreadsheet just how many there are. You could spend just about every waking moment on Twitter engaged in a chat. But there are a couple for educators that you should definitely check out.

#Edchat-Tuesdays 7pm and 12pm EDT- Yes. I am a biased. As one of the founders its hard to leave this one off the list. The main chat is at 7pm and the other at 12pm is aimed at our friends in Europe and abroad. The topics are voted on Sunday-Tuesday mornings and encompass a wide range of topics.

#SSchat-Mondays 7pm EDT- This chat for Social Studies teachers has some of the brightest minds on Twitter that participate. Their topics, while centered around social studies, range from portfolios, to PBL to Understanding by Design. Whether you are teaching Kindergarten or AP American History, this is a chat worth your time.

#Engchat-Mondays 7pm EDT- This chat for teachers of English does some very interesting chats and often has special guests and moderators.

#PTchat-Wednesdays 9pm EDT- This is one of those chats that has seen a lot of changes. Now that my friend Joe Mazza is heading it up, it is finally doing some good. Joe is trying to bridge the gap between parents and schools and in this chat he invites parents to talk about issues with education from their perspective. It is a chat that gets bigger and bigger every week and one that I enjoy lurking in on.

#NTchat-Wednesdays 8pm EDT- Another chat I love to lurk on is this one from my friend Lisa Dabbs. They share topics and resources for New Teachers but you don't have to be new to participate. They share such great stuff I always have something I can share the next day.

#Elemchat-Saturdays 6pm EDT-For teachers in the lower grade levels, this chat is always a good time. The stories they share in addition to the resources are great for anyone that sits in here.

Not big on chats? Not a problem. Follow these hashtags anyway. People use the hashtags to extend the reach of their tweets so there are usually great things posted all week long at all times of day. So while you might not want the conversation, you can still reap the rewards by following them.

And don't forget, Jerry (Cybraryman) has curated and organized all the educational Twitter chats into a webpage that is easy to read. So you can no doubt find something for your content area or interest.

These are my favorites. What are some of yours? Leave the details below.

Image details here. 

It's All About The Hashtag

If you remember, in my 3 part series on Twitter, I wrote about how I completely changed the way I do professional development on Twitter. In a nutshell, I no longer start with signing up and tweeting the first day. I always show how to use Twitter without ever signing up. I believe it's important to establish the value in using it rather than using it and attempting to find the value.

What a lot of people don't realize that Twitter is a very powerful search engine. Just like Google, if you know how to use the search effectively you can find pretty much anything. And one of those effective ways is leveraging the power of hashtags.

What is a hashtag you ask?

From The Twitter Fan Wiki: Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol.

Basically, its a tag in your post so that you or someone else can find it later or track it as it is happening. For example, lets say you are watching the Super Bowl. You want to hear what other folks are saying about the game. You can do a search (on twitter.com/search) for the hashtag #SuperBowl and see what others talking about. Many TV shows, events, companies, and more are creating hashtags to monitor conversations and just generally engage with other followers.

Right, but how does this help you find stuff for your classroom?

Well, there are loads of great educational hashtags that have been created that you can search out and see what folks are posting. Are you a Social Studies teacher or need history resources? Check out #sschat. Maybe English is your thing. So there is #engchat. Perhaps you are looking for just general education resources. Then you should do a search for #edchat.

There are so many more educational hashtags out there. Lucky for all of us we have CybraryMan. Jerry (his real name) has collected several pages of hashtags for all of us to enjoy.

You may notice that many of the EDU hashtags include the word "chat" in them. There are some great chats on Twitter around various issues in education. (I wrote about this a while back.) Jerry also has a great page of how to take part in the EDU Chats and the times of various chats as well.

Oh and I get asked a lot how  to create a hashtag. Simple my friends, simple. You just create it! There isn't a special form or permission you need in order to make a hashtag you just make one. My advice is, however, do a search on Twitter for the hashtag you want to use, just to make sure other stuff isn't posted to it already. (That can save a lot of time and embarrassment later.) Once you have it in mind, start using it. This can be great for schools/districts or classrooms to create tags to allow other members of the community to see whats being said to follow along with events, games, etc.

The point of all this is that while you may be a connected educator or you use Twitter regularly, there may be some educators around you who just don't see the point. Or they say they don't want to use Twitter. Well, the hashtag provides a way for anyone, no matter who, to reap the rewards of the information that flows across the Twitterverse and have it delivered to you when ever you need it.

What are some of your favorite hashtags to follow? Leave some comments below.

Twitter Series-My Super, Top Secret Tips And Tricks For Getting The Most Out Of Twitter

This is the last in my series on everything Twitter. You can read this first on How I do Twitter PD and the second on What People Wish They Had Known Before They Started. 

Today lets look at all my tips, tricks and resources for getting more out of Twitter. 

I get asked all the time one of three questions:

1) Where do you find all those links you post?
2) How do you make sure you don't miss everything without staying on Twitter 24/7?
3) How do you organize everything you find from Twitter?

Well I am so glad you asked. There really aren't any secrets. It's just great resources that I use to leverage more out of Twitter to find what I am looking for or to keep myself organized.

So lets look at what I use...

1) Where Do You Find All Those Links That You Post? Well my brain is hardwired to Google so I just think of something and it gets tweeted. Ok, if only that were true.Actually a lot of what I find to post comes from the work I do. And all goes back to where I started.

Almost 3 years ago, when I created my account I was looking for a way to share the resources I was looking for with the teachers across my district. Twitter was a great and easy way to do it. And that has continued in to my current role. I get to spend lots of time looking for resources for teachers across my district. Sharing is caring so I figure if one teacher in my district can benefit there are probably others out there too.

So the long and short of it is I usually start with a Google search. And that will yield some good results... sometimes. One of my favorite resources is the wisdom of the crowd. And there is no better place for that then Diigo. With Diigo search I can look for specific tags of items that folks have shared. Most of the time I get better results there than anywhere else. And I keep my links there too for anyone to be able to find. Most every link I have ever posted ends up there, eventually. And I don't hesitate to revisit and post something I already posted a while back.

Google Reader is another place. I follow lots of different blogs on lots of different subjects. And I almost always find great content there. Sometimes it's like going down the rabbit hole. I will check out a post on one of my favorite blogs, FreeTech4Teachers, from my good friend Richard. He will post something that will lead me to something else, that leads me to something else and so and so on. I can get really deep looking for stuff, finding great content to share along the way.

A lot of what I post is retweets from other folks. Again, letting the wisdom of the crowds do the work for me to find great content. It goes back to following people for their quality, not following as many people as I can. And retweets extend the reach of your network. You and I might follow each other, but someone who follows me, might not follow you. So the RT extends the content and grows the network. It's a win-win!

2) How Do You Make Sure You Don't Miss Everything Without Staying On Twitter 24/7? Believe it or not I do sleep. Not well since I have a 2 year old that thinks 3 am is a great time to get up and play. But I do take breaks, often. One of the biggest misconceptions is that you have to be on Twitter all the time to see all the content. Keep in mind, if stuff is really good or "not to miss" lots of people will pass it around over the course of several hours/days. You are bound to see it at some point.

Hashtags are a great way to keep up with stuff. Lists are another. Both allow you to go back in time up to 2 weeks to find stuff. While hashtags are a great way to track conversations and to find people to follow, many will post resources and hashtag them so others will find them. You can then put all your favorite people in a list so that you can see their posts any time. (And if you use something like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite it is easy to set up columns to follow those things any time.)

There are tons of great websites too that will find the most important stuff for you. The Tweeted Times and Paper.li are two sites that, when you connect them with your account will analyze the resources of the people you follow and find the best ones and present them to you in a newspaper format. (These are 2 more ways I find great content too.)

KnowAboutIt is new service I have been playing with. Instead of finding the most important content it gives you every link that comes through your stream along with the tweet and who tweeted it. You also get a daily email of the most popular content along with what they call Hidden Gems, content that might interest you based upon what comes through your stream.

The point is you don't have to be on all the time or feel like you have to see everything that comes by. Be smart and use these tools and let them do the work for you.

3) How Do You Organize Everything You Find On Twitter? I have a group of monkeys that does all my filing, filtering, evaluating and organizing for me. Sadly, not true. But I do have lots of tools that I use to help me keep track of everything I find.

One I have written about before is Read It Later. This is, hands down, my favorite tool. When someone posts something and I don't have time to check it out I just add it to my Read It Later list and go over it when I do have the time. The best part, I can access my list from anywhere on any device. So if I am sitting some where for a few moments I can go through my list.

Diigo, which I mentioned before for finding loads of great content is where I put my content too. I have always been a fan of Diigo because of the great stuff they offer educators but really I like just being able to save my links there and give them tags so that I and others can find them easily.

The point to all this is that Twitter isn't work. It's not supposed to take up massive amounts of time or energy. Sure you have to spend some personal capitol keeping up and growing your network but as you have seen there are loads of great tools out there that you can put to work for you to find amazing and valuable resources for you and your classroom.

What do you use? What are your favorite Twitter tools to keep up with or organize your stream. Leave some comments below.

Twitter Series-A New Kind Of Twitter PD

 This week I am going to do a series of posts on Twitter. I get asked a lot of questions about it so I though, why not write about it and put all the details in one place. 

You can read Part 2 here and Part 3 here. 


Today I am starting with Twitter Professional Development.

As many times as I have talked to folks, done workshops for and even preached about Twitter, there are some that just won't (for whatever reason) jump in. When I first started I didn't understand. How could someone not want to just ride the rapids like me, soak in all the information they could? There was so much out there to discover, why not engage, react, comment, all the time? It took me a while to realize that maybe, for some, the best way to use Twitter was not to use Twitter.

Huh?

Yep. I have taken a radically different approach to teaching educators about Twitter.

Take a step back and think about PD done about Twitter. Many will start with a basic example of its use (if the participants are lucky) or how the presenter started with Twitter or maybe a shoutout, asking their followers to tell where they are from and why they should Twitter. All good stuff. It's great to see how someone actually uses it but most times I find folks who take the time to come to PD on Twitter already know or have heard of the benefits from others or they just don't get that stuff to begin with so why start with it?

After the example comes the registration process. This can be a battle. Twitter has a limit as to the number of accounts that can be created from the same IP address. Many school networks are set up so that no matter what machine you are on it appears to the outside world every machine has the same IP. So if you are all trying to create accounts you could get bogged down in the process.

Then comes the terminology. What is a RT? Hashtag? Mention? Direct Message? At this point the folks who were super excited to learn might be feeling frustrated or overwhelmed even. Lots of information has been covered up to this point. Maybe an hours worth all ready.

And there is still so much more to cover...

Now comes the first Tweet. Then looking at chats or search or lists. The resources could go on and on and on and on and on...

When someone leaves this session one of twothings will happen.

They will be super excited about it all. They were engaged and soaked it all in. They are pumped and are going forth to the world to tweet to their hearts content.

Then there are the others. Those that might have been excited at one point but now are overwhelmed because of the amount of information covered. They may try to give it a shot but ultimately will walk away because it was simply too much for them to take in.

I used to teach PD like that. Exactly like that. Then one day I went back and looked at the number of people who actually stuck with Twitter. I talked to them, asked them if they were tweeting or even checking in now and then. For the vast majority of them, the answer was no. It was just too much for them.

So I had to do something different..

I developed a new method of teaching folks about Twitter where I don't actually teach them how to use Twitter. How you might ask. Well, sir, it's actually pretty easy to use Twitter without using it.

I always break my Twitter PD into several sessions. In the first, depending on who I am talking to, we look at the reason why they should use it. We have to make that personal connection to them so they see how valuable this tool can be.

So let's look at Administrators. They are usually the toughest folks to convince. We would start by talking about Twitter Search. We could brainstorm some common search terms for administrators and plug them into Twitter search and see what comes up. We may find stuff, we may not. (That's the beauty of search.) That then opens up the conversation to hashtags. What are they, and how are they used? So we would look at common hashtags Administrators use (like #cpchat or #edchat) and plug those into search. That's when the eyes light up. They see specific resources and people, right off, related to their area. (If you don't know a hashtag to search for with your specific group, check out this page from my good friend Jerry "Cybraryman" Blumengarten).

Now, it used to be we could save that search very easy with RSS (Twitter has since removed that feature but you can still add that search to Google Reader using these instructions.). Since it isn't quite as easy, a simple collaborative Google Doc with the link to Twitter Search and common searches works just fine. That way, after our time together, folks can add what they are finding and searching. The doc also serves the purpose to show how powerful things can be when we share. Then when we actually talk about how to use Twitter, they are used to it. The idea of sharing like that isn't foreign to them. So transitioning to the Twitter medium isn't that much of a jump.

Before they leave that first session, I give them my Twitter Livebinder. In it they will find loads of information. Videos on how to sign up, dictionaries, examples of use and best practices. They have it because they might decide to go ahead and sign up before the next time we meet. And if that's the case, it's one less thing we have to spend time on. And they will use it as a resource through out their learning and their journey.

The next time we meet we will go over all those basics about signing up, tweeting, etc. But we will spend most of our time on the other 2 things that drive educators away from Twitter; the Twitter Website and organizing information.

First the Twitter Website. We visit it one time. Then from there on out. They know not to return there. The web interface is the most unfriendly way to look at Twitter. We look at 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to help begin organizing our streams. They can take some of those searches they want quick access to and add them here. (Don't get me wrong, for some, the web interface works. For most, they need to get away from there as quickly as possible.)

One of the last things we look at is what to do with all the information they have gathered and will gather. Users need to feel like like they don't have to evaluate every resource that comes to them right then. Thank goodness they don't. I teach my participants about ReadItLater (hands down my favorite tool.). And I show them how to use Diigo too. And guess what? Learning about both of these are in the Twitter Livebinder so they have a way to go back and brush up their skills when they leave me.

So that is 2 days and about 4 hours worth of time learning about educators should use Twitter. We can then go further looking at setting up class/school/district accounts, or hashtags or anything else really. But I have found that this is pretty effective way for educators to learn about Twitter. They have got to see the value in. They have to see the resources first, before they even sign up in order to see why they should stick with it.

What do you think? What kind of Twitter PD worked for you? What kind didn't? Leave some thoughts below.

In Part 2 we will look what what people wished they had know about Twitter before they started. Check that out on Wednesday.

Twitter In Schools-A Getting Started Guide

The end of the school year is upon us however many are looking forward to next year. You may be thinking what can you do differently next year? How can you stand out above the crowd? How can your school become a larger part of the school community?

While Twitter is beginning to catch on with many educators, schools are lagging in their adoption of the platform. But let's think about it. Twitter is a quick and easy tool to let the entire school community know whats going on with you and your students. Updates can come from anywhere and users don't have to have a Twitter account to follow along.

But where do you start? What are some things to consider? Here is my primer and some advice for schools (and districts) that want to start using Twitter.

Think First-There are a few questions you and your team (and it should be a team) will want to ask and answer before you jump in:

• What do you want to do with this account? What do you hope to accomplish? What do you want to communicate? So, you are going to have a Twitter account. Great! Why? What do you want to tell people? The possibilities here are really endless. But think beyond the basic stuff like picture day and what's for lunch. Consider taking pictures of kids doing collaborative projects or highlighting staff of the month. It can really go beyond all the regular communication and show the community what your school (or district) is all about.
• Who will be in charge of the account? Will there be just one person who will post or will you have multiple people who post? This is all situation dependent. I would say more than one person is great but too many and things can get out of hand and duplicate information could easily be posted. Keep it simple and experiment to find what works for your group.
• Will you follow anyone? Again, this is situation dependent. You may want to follow other schools and the teachers in your school but will you follow parents? Students? Community members? If you are just going to be broadcasting following becomes less of an issue. If you want to facilitate interaction then following is important and your group will need to decide some guidelines on who to follow.
• If someone sends you an @ message, will you respond? Often times your account will get mentioned or someone will send you a question. Your group will need to decide how to handle these questions. My district has a Twitter account but it is a one way conversation. It rarely will respond to questions from the general public. I believe it should be interactive. So take time to get back to folks who need information from you. 

What's In A Name-Now you are ready to set up your account. You will need an email address that is not already associated with a Twitter account already. If you can have a generic email set up by the district that is the best way to handle that. Otherwise you will have to find an email address to use. (You could always set up a dummy gmail address as well.) The email address is used to confirm the account and sent notices of DM's and new followers and such. You will want to pick a name that is easy to remember and is your school's brand. This is the point where you will define who your school will be on Twitter. Remember though, users only have 140 characters to tweet with and if your user name is @RonaldReganHighSchool that doesn't leave a lot for others to tweet with. So maybe you go with @RRHS. Adding your location like town or state doesn't hurt either. Just keep it simple. And remember, there are several hundred million Twitter users so don't be disappointed if your first choice for a username is taken. Get creative and find something that can become your brand.

Who Are You- A profile will go a long way in letting people know who you are. This is the place you can put in your full school name, location, description and link to your school website. You will also want to put in a picture, either of a mascot or school symbol. That helps other users identify, quickly, who you are.

Hashtags- A good idea is to also come up with a hashtag. This will allow you to track conversations even if your account is not mentioned in a tweet. So for example we use in our district, the initials as our hashtag, #wsfcs. The hashtag is good because classes and teachers can send tweets and still reference your school with out mentioning you in the tweet. You can then collect them and retweet them as you see fit. And you don't have to follow everyone either to see what folks are saying. If you have monitors set up near your entrance you can use a program like Twitterfall to display all the tweets coming in on your hashtag. That might also entice folks to check out your Twitter account and learn more about your presence there.

Promote- The account does no good if no one knows about it. Let everyone know. Put a widget on your website so every time folks visit they see your updates. Tell parents about it in mailings home. A simple "Follow Us On Twitter" and a link will go a long way into getting folks to see what you are saying. You may also want to make some videos on how to find your updates and what you will be using your account for.

But I Don't Want To Be On Twitter-You may find resistance to the idea of a school Twitter account because folks don't want one of their own. That's cool. They don't have to have one. The easiest way to follow updates is to have their own account but they can also subscribe via the RSS feed found on your profile page, subscribe through SMS (text) messages on their phone (they have to have an account for this) or they can add the Facebook widget to their page and see the updates every they visit. And remember, you should have the widget on your school webpage so there are many ways to see the updates without actually your community using the service themselves.

There are some other basics you will need, especially if you haven't Tweeted before. Check out my Twitter In Education Livebinder for the basics.

So this summer, if you haven't already, take the time to get a school-wide (or district-wide) Twitter account set up and help connect your school to the community. And if you can think of other things to consider or something I might have left of leave me some comments below.


Image From Flickr CC spencereholtaway

Twitter-It's Not Just What's For Breakfast...

For some, Twitter is a place where people talk about themselves, show pictures of what they are eating or a platform for celebrities to make sure they are even more a part of our lives. And certainly those tweets and tweeters are out there. A simple search of a few key words will reveal a world of misfits, narcissists and sometimes even worse.

And this is what I am up against everyday. You might be too. Trying to explain to people what Twitter is and more and more what it is not. And in education it is especially hard trying to convince Superintendents, School Boards, administrators and others that Twitter is a viable place for learning about real-time events and a place where educators can take part in some really meaningful professional development.

I get asked all the time how do I show the benefits of Twitter to skeptics. What is my ammo, go-to sites and examples that I point to when talking about all this stuff? So finally I have organized it all into a short list and will give it to you so you can arm your self with Twitter knowledge and head out into the world and start changing some minds.

An Intro To Twitter
This is a video that I noticed just recently and wished I had it since I started. While it looks cute and cuddly (which it is) the way these 2 really break down what Twitter is helps me explain it even better when I talk to people.



Twitter In 60 Seconds
This is another one of my "go-to" videos when I talk to educators about Twitter. I like the analogies and how it focuses on the conversation aspect of Twitter. And it is only 60 seconds. Can't beat that!



Twitter Misconceptions
On this site are the Top 10 Misconceptions about Twitter. Things like people only tweet about what they eat for breakfast, or to Tweet means you have to give up massive amounts of time. 

Twister
There are lots of services that will copy what Twitter does. This one is a little different. What do you think George Washington would have tweeted as he lead the army across the Potomac? Or what would Mubarak had tweeted as he watched Egyptian empire crumble around him? Using Twister, kids and teachers can use a simple form to create tweets, even full profile pages around historical figures. There are several examples to look at and lots of possibilities. 


Twitter Chats
I have written a lot about this before but being able to show that there are lots of educators with similar curricular areas talking on a regular basis is huge for changing minds. Many don't think there is a chat for their area but when I show them Cybrary Man's page for chats, the lightbulb goes off.

7 Things You Should Know About Twitter
This 2 page PDF from Educase really breaks down what you need to know before dipping your toes into the Twitter water and explains how educators can get the most out of it.

How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer
This is one I use all the time because this was me. I was a horrible writer and had an awful time getting my thoughts down properly and in a concise way. Twitter has really helped me improve both of those things and more. (Although I do have a very long way to go...)

Twitter Can Save You Time
Another one I have found recently, this simple example from a good friend of mine about how he went to Twitter out of frustration and found exactly what he was looking for when no one else could provide it for him really helps to show one of the daily benefits many of us get when using Twitter.

Of course if I have more time I show lots more examples about how Twitter is used in the classroom (like the UT Dallas Twitter Experiment), or have some special guests talk about how they are using Twitter to do some really cool things with learning (like my good friends Shannon and Nick and their Epic Romeo and Juliet project that all evolved out of Twitter.).

I always point people to my Twitter Livebinder (below) that has tons and tons of all my Twitter info that I keep so they can read up on all this and more.

An Educators Guide To Twitter

How do you explain Twitter to people? What are you resources? Leave some comments below.

Image From Geekandpoke-FlickrCC

Why Can't We All Just Get Along...

So, I just realized this is my 400th post. Neat! Thanks for reading and all your support over the past 2 years!




This is a post that has been brewing for a while now....


But after a conversation I had this weekend I think it's time to get some of my thoughts out there for reflection. 


I totally get passion in education. And really can you be an educator and not have passion for education? Perhaps that is a post for another time. 


But the way I see it, many have moved passed passion and moved to anger. 


Again, I totally get that. I am upset with many things in our current system. Sure, if asked, I would give a lot of the "reformers" a piece of my mind. 


But...


It seems like if  you disagree with one side or the other you are perceived as dumb, stupid, or much, much worse. 


My conversation started out with a Tweet that (to paraphrase) asked if a certain, central figure in the reform debate, that many admire and look up to actually had any ideas or if she just ran around the country telling us what is wrong without actually offering up any ideas. I follow this "reformer" on Twitter and her stream is filled with what comes across in 140 characters as anger. Again, I get that. (Remember, I am angry too.) But my point was that when you had the audience she did last week why not give them something tangible to take back to their districts to try or do? Seems reasonable, right?


Normally I don't tweet things like that. I don't. I like the discussion but there are people out there in ol' Twitter land that use the screen as one of anonymity and they believe because they are behind this screen they can say and do whatever they like. Don't get me wrong. Again, I love the conversations. I totally enjoy for my thinking to be pushed. However I have limits....


So after my tweet, which I figured would draw some comments I got plenty of, "I agrees," and a few people who disagreed, which was great. I had fun engaging and talking to them. Then there was one who, has passion, but that passion has grow to anger. And if you cross them, say anything negative about the reformer  whom I mentioned earlier, well, you might as well pack up and go home. 


This tweeter had solid arguments for certain types of reform and the direction we should be going, many I agreed with. However, it was the personal attacks and just general poor language that really made me loose respect for this tweeter. 


Disagreement is cool. Makes us think differently and see other sides, but to move from disagreement to creative hashtags, none appropriate to even write here, really just make your arguments look weak. 


This isn't the first time I have written about this or even encountered it. In a post from late last year I wrote about Education Nation project from NBC and how it was getting all sorts of negative attention from the Twittevers and blogsphere. Again, there I tried to say we needed to move from talk to action. 


In my most popular post ever on this blog I wrote about why we should all think before we Tweet. 


For me I keep coming back to this idea that I believe people who use social media or tools like it feel some level of anonymity and they can say, really what ever. What if we were having a face-to-face conversation? Would the person who I had my conversation with this past weekend behaved the same and said the same things? I am doubtful. 


I am not the only one to notice this trend. My friend Michelle, just wrote a post today about the exact same issue. In it she says; 

What do we tell kids about comments on blogs, online articles, Facebook status updates?

1. PLAY NICELY.
2. If you disagree, you can do so without attacking another person’s character.
3. If you wouldn’t say it in person, don’t type it online.
4. Remember, there are human beings on the other end.
5. Remember, you are also a human being.
6. Rule #1 is really all you need.

So why so much animosity amongst educators in online spaces lately? I would say that the current turmoil in which we find ourselves (perhaps related to education reform discussions) is part of it. But are we practicing what we preach? I don’t think so.

Couldn't agree more Michelle. And Seth Godin had a piece this weekend where this last line says simply, "Anger, on the other hand, makes us smaller." 

We are going to disagree. And you know, that makes us smarter, pushes our thinking and helps us see all sides. But is it possible to do it without anger? Passion, sure. But anger?

What do you think? Is this a problem today? Is it a result of the anonymity I say the screen provides or is it something else? Leave some comments below. 

Twitter: The Livebinders Edition

I get asked a lot about Twitter. From how educators are using it to more basics like what does RT mean or what are those funny little things called hashtags?

Over the past few days I have been going through my over 1000 sites I have saved in Diigo to find the best stuff on Twitter. I have compiled it all into a Livebinder. (If you don't know what a Livebinder is, check this out.)

In this binder you will find information on:
Getting Started
Terminology
The Art Of The ReTweet
Hashtags
#Edchat
Misconceptions
Twitter In Education
More Resources

There is something for everyone, for those just getting started to those who are experienced users.

An Educators Guide To Twitter
(The URL in case you need it: http://livebinders.com/play/present?id=34291)

Did miss something? What would add? Leave me some comments below.