Twitter for educators

I am a big social media user. I have accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+. However, the social media account I use most is Twitter, the microblogging tool. In Twitter, I share my own discoveries and learn from others every day. It is a huge source of professional development for me. Twitter is a great place to learn about new resources, trends in education, tools, and to ask questions of very smart people!

Until last month, the limit of characters that could be typed in a Twitter message was 140. It was doable, but often took some finagling to make the content I wanted to share fit in that amount of characters. 

I liked the fact that the character limit was 140 characters when I was reading my Twitter feed, because I could read through the stream of messages quickly. The 280-character tweets will definitely take more time to read.

However, for those of us that are long-time Twitter users, I assume we will will continue to be succinct with the information we share. Having the additional characters will allow us to not abbreviate words, use leet-speak, emoticons, or leave off a hashtag we want to include, so these longer tweets will become much easier to “decipher”.  When Twitter conducted its beta testing of the 280-character limit, the company found only 5% of the users with the larger limit went over the previous 140 character limit.

BEGINNERS GUIDE

For those of you not yet using Twitter, the first thing to learn is the vocabulary that is used with this tool.

Handle: A Twitter handle is your username. You most often see others sharing their handles looking like this “@kathyschrock”.

Tweet: A tweet is simple a single Twitter message you read or send.

Feed: The feed is the list of tweets you read from others.

Follow: When you click on someone and pick to “follow” them, their tweets show up in your Twitter feed.

Retweet: When anyone on Twitter re-sends a tweet they have received to their followers, that is called a “retweet”. Depending on which tool you are using to read Twitter, you may also be able to add additional text to the item you are retweeting.

Mention: In your Twitter account, you receive a notification when anyone puts your Twitter handle in a tweet (mention). In addition, if you are reading Tweets in your feed, you can click on a username mentioned in a Tweet and see that person’s Twitter postings.

Direct message: The ability to send a Tweet to just one person is called “direct messaging”. There is a setting in Twitter that allows you to limit the Twitter users who can direct message you to just the people you follow in Twitter.

Lists: In Twitter, you can create lists to categorize those that you follow and/or those you do not follow. For instance, if you create a list called “Administrators” and add those that are principals and superintendents to the list, you can simply click on the list title and see the information being posted by all users on that list

Hashtag: A hashtag is most commonly an agreed-upon phrase or word that is added in a tweet. For instance, a edtech conference in Massachusetts might decide that #MAssCUE17 will be the hashtag for their conference. If everyone who tweets from the conference includes that hashtag as part of their tweets, anyone can do a search on that hashtag in the Twitter search tool and all of the tweets from the conference will show up together.

Twitter chat: Educators love to share their thoughts and ideas. An educational Twitter chat is a scheduled time for an online discussion. There is usually a moderator who asks questions, preceding the question with Q1, Q2, etc., and including the hashtag for the Twitter chat. Those attending are looking for that hashtag, and responding to the questions with A1, A2, etc., and also including the agreed-upon hashtag. You can find list of scheduled educational Twitter chats here and here. The Teacher Challenges blog provides a great overview on how to attend a Twitter chat session.

TWITTER TIPS

Teachers often ask me how they find people to follow on Twitter. My suggestion is to find one trusted source to follow, and look at the list of people that person follows. You can click on any person on that list, and read some of the tweets, and, if the tweets look useful, you can follow that person, too. This is the social media component of Twitter– you can see everyone else’s lists of people they follow and make them your own!

It is not just people that have Twitter accounts, but also companies and organizations. Discovery Communications has multiple Twitter accounts you may want to follow.

@DiscoveryComm: the account for the parent company, Discovery Communications which includes overviews of new and upcoming offerings

@DiscoveryEd: the Twitter handle for Discovery Education, which targets all things Discovery and education including tips and tricks for Discovery Education Streaming.

TWITTER ETIQUETTE

I have some personal thoughts on the usage of Twitter.

• If you want to ask another Twitter user a question that will require a answer of more than 280 characters, use email to ask the question. This way, you can receive a more detailed answer.
• When you sign up for Twitter, there is an area for a short biography. I suggest you put the fact you are an educator in that bio so others know that about you.
• Remember the goal is not to gather the most followers. The goal is to hone your PLN online and collaborate with those you follow and who follow you.
• Do not be offended if you follow someone on Twitter and they do not follow you back. Perhaps they are keeping those that the follow to a small, manageable number.
• Sometimes you find someone you follow has blocked you, which means you can no longer see their tweets in your feed. Don’t take offense at that. Sometimes Twitter users want to hone their followers so they know exactly who they are tweeting to.

TOOLS

There are many different tools and apps you can use to read and post tweets. Some have single columns, some are specifically for mobile devices, some are Web-based, and some have configurable columns so you can follow your feed, other users, and hashtags all on a single screen!  I have links to many of these on my “Twitter for Teachers” page. This page also includes links to how you might use Twitter to support teaching and learning.

Do you have any Twitter tips and tricks to share? Please add your thoughts to Twitter! #kathyschrock

Pay it forward

I am a big believer in "paying it forward". I know, from personal experience, that helping someone out or doing something nice for someone makes the world a better place. When that person you support helps someone else, and on and on, the movement spreads.

I consider Twitter a perfect example of paying it forward. I find something to share I feel my followers will benefit from and, if they think so, they send it off to their followers, and the benefits multiply! 

If I see some great link or idea or thought from the people I follow on Twitter, I re-tweet it to my followers, and am happy to have found something of interest for them.

I don't follow everyone who follows me on Twitter. As much as I would like to, I currently have over 22,000 educators who follow me on Twitter. I consider it an obligation to provide them with links, ideas, things I discover, and upcoming events of interest. I do throw in some personal things at times. I am hoping that is okay with them.

I follow 212 people on Twitter. They are educators who provide me with great ideas, have different networks than I do and retweet items I never would have seen, and are always there when I have a question or concern. 

Of course, unless I follow a person on Twitter, they cannot direct message me. Some followers get very upset they cannot direct message me and chide me for not following them. That's silly. I hone my PLN to what I need and keep it manageable to make sure it is useful. It is in constant flux as I follow and unfollow tweeters. In addition, my email address is in my Twitter profile (something I suggest everyone should do) and any one of my followers can email me at any time!

I look at the profile of each person who follows me on Twitter as they begin to follow me. It is disheartening to me that many educators continue to protect their tweets. They are not paying it forward, in my opinion. I want to visit their profile, see the things they are tweeting, and decide if I want to follow them. I don't want to be forced into picking to follow them, waiting for them to approve me, then checking out what they post, and then decide to continue to follow them or unfollow them.










Tweets from users who have protected accounts do not show up in a Twitter search. I also didn't think others could re-tweet tweets from those that protect their tweets. I actually was unsure about this, so I asked my twitter followers.

My tweet:

Here are the first few answers I received (read from the bottom up)

I found Ben's initial comment and then follow-up interesting, but true. Although Susan said the same thing about cutting and pasting. And my favorite was from Greg, who agrees with me, that teachers need to "tweet in public" and not protect their tweets.

And Ben, who tells teachers that it is their digital footprint and their choice to keep their tweets protected, also stated:

(Late addition: I am getting mixed messages on whether you can or cannot re-tweet protected tweets. It may be dependent on the browser-based version or whether you are using a specific Twitter client.)

I truly believe that collaboration and sharing and participating are really important in social networks. I encourage teachers who feel they have personal stuff in their Twitter account, that they don't want the world to see, to create a personal Twitter account and protect that one. 

Keep your professional account wide open so others can see the great things you are tweeting, easily follow you to keep up with your new ideas and thoughts, and can re-tweet your super ideas to their Twitter followers!

Please pay it forward!

I love my Twitter PLN!

Today I created a video with the very fun app for the iPad (and iPhone and iPod Touch) called SockPuppets. I had a special reason for using it and purchased extra time to make my video longer than the 30 seconds that they allow.

The output options in SockPuppets are to share to Facebook or YouTube. I needed to get the video up to YouTube, so I thought I was all set. However, I got an error message whenever I tried to send the video to YouTube. I figured I could solve it with a little research.

• I did some searching, and could not come up with any posts of others having troubles. 
• I then went to the app creator's Web site and looked in the Knowledge Base and FAQ's.Nothing there.
• I did a chat session with tech support at the company's site, and was told I probably needed to set a setting in YouTube that would allow uploads from third party apps.
• I looked through YouTube and found no such setting.
• I then put in a request to the YouTube team for help.
• I posted my first note to Twitter asking someone to try to do the same thing so I could see if it was just me. Of course, I am retired, and everyone else was actually teaching, so I did not get any responses.
• I tried it on the iPhone with the same resulting error message.
• I decided to share the video it to Facebook, which worked well, and then used the new version 2.1 of Camtasia for the Mac to record the video from Facebook. I then moved the resulting screencast to YouTube.
• I posted another tweet asking for help and got lots of responses. Some of my PLN members even took the time to download the app, create a video, and try the upload. Below are the responses I received. The results were mixed, and I could still not figure out the problem.

Twitter answers to my ask for help

Jen Legatt (@192TIS) was a new user of SockPuppets, so, when she told me it worked for her, I asked if she used a Gmail address when the app asked for log in information to YouTube. You can see from the above conversation that she told me she had used only her USERNAME, not the full Gmail address. Doh!

I went back and looked at the sign-in screen in SockPuppets and it did just say enter your YouTube username and password, not your Gmail address and password. Geesh! Once I put in only my username for YouTube, not the entire Gmail address, it worked like a charm!

I spent most of the day figuring out how to make this work and searching and asking. And it was one little follow-up question to one of the great educators that were helping me out that provided the answer! I love my Twitter PLN!

Tweeting a meeting and more...

Tweeting Meetings

I once tweeted an entire Steve Jobs press conference, 140 characters at a time, for over an hour to all of my followers. Oops! Did I stop to think that everyone might not be interested in the topic. Nope. Did I stop to think that some people get their tweets on their cell phones via SMS and I was sending them tons of text messages? Nope.

Well, many of my followers dropped me a tweet and let me know that my constant tweeting was a problem that day. I thought about a way to solve the problem and still give those that WANT to receive the tweets the option to do so. Here is my solution.

1. I set up another Twitter account (schrock_bkchan) for tweeting meetings and conferences. I call it my Schrock Backchannel account.
2. When I am going to be tweeting a meeting or conference sessions, I tweet in my regular "kathyschrock" Twitter account that I will be doing so, and also include the link to the schrock_bkchan account in the tweet.
3. Users can choose to follow the alternate account if they are interested in the topic, and unfollow once the event is over.

Using this method, followers who are not interested in my pithy comments about a conference session do not get overwhelmed with lots of tweets. This is a good way to keep your followers happy! (Hint, hint to many of the educators I follow!)

More...

There are more good practices for Twitter-using educators I would like to share.

1. Put something in the bio area about being a teacher. I check the bio of everyone who follows me, and I sometimes block those that are not educators. My tweets are pretty much all educational in nature, and intended for a certain audience, and I try to keep the followers that fit that demographic.
2. If you are going to be using Twitter, do not protect your tweets. Part of being a good Netizen is sharing your expertise with others. Someone may not necessarily want to follow you, but your great comments don't even show up in the Twitter search tool if you don't make your tweets public. (I often find great educators to follow when searching in the Twitter search tool.) Keep another Twitter account for personal stuff, and protect only those tweets. 
3. Don't feel upset if someone you follow is not following you. I have lots and lots of followers (thank you very much!), but I only follow about 160. No one can possibly follow 6000+ people and get anything else done! I know you cannot DM me if I do not follow you, and I apologize. But I check all the @responses and will respond back to you in a timely fashion.  My Personal Learning Network is small, but good, and I often expand it as I see RT of those that I do not follow yet in a post by someone I follow. (Using Twitter effectively does take some practice!)

Twitter is a wonderful professional collaboration and learning tool. Don't forget to be cognizant of your followers, identify what you do, add to the Twitterverse with your open tweets, and create a well-honed PLN!

Educators' Use of Twitter: Survey Results

This survey was open to participants from March 10 through April 1, 2010. The data was collected via a Google form. The survey was originally created by Emily Embury of C. Blohm & Associates (http://www.cblohm.com/) for a session at COSN 2010 dealing with Twitter. She gathered data from the pre-registered educators for COSN, and summarized it online. 


I liked the survey, and, because her data set was rather small, I asked if I could send it out through my personal learning network to gather additional data.  She graciously agreed, and the only changes I have made on the presentation are the first three questions.


I sent out the survey link to 5800+ educators on Twitter, and asked them to share the link with those in their school and/or district, whether or not they were current Twitter users. I received 284 valid responses.


The first section of the survey was a collection of demographic data from the responders.

The second section dealt with personal and professional use of Twitter.


The third section dealt with school or district use of Twitter.


Here is a slide show of the survey results.




Thank you to all who participated in the survey. Feel free to use this data if you need it to justify the use of Twitter in your school or district, to provide data to get it unblocked in your school or district, or for any other reason. 

Citation for the study:

Schrock, Kathleen. (2010, April 2). Educators' Use of Twitter: Survey Results. Retrieved Month Day, Year, from http://blog.kathyschrock.net/2010/04/educators-use-of-twitter-survey-results.html

Educators' Use of Twitter Survey

I recently came across some interesting data compiled by Emily Embury of C. Blohm & Associates from the results of a survey administered to the educators on the pre-registration list of COSN 2010.

Her pool of survey-takers were the people in the session, and I asked her for permission to send out the survey to my personal learning network to gather more data. She graciously agreed, so here it is!

Make sure to send the link to the survey page
(http://linkyy.com/twittersurvey) to others to complete the survey! We need info from Twitter and non-Twitter users alike!

Take the survey!

Results from Twitter goals survey

I am preparing an introductory Twitter presentation and am using information from a blog post by Charlene Kingston dealing with setting goals for your own use of Twitter.

I asked my Twitter PLN to answer a short survey on this topic. I sent the tweet out to my 4625 followers, and some of my followers re-tweeted the request to 4019 of their followers (who may or may not overlap with my followers.) I received 196 responses, many in the first few hours of posting the request on Twitter.

The yes/no questions were as follows:

1. I am a K-16 educator or pre-service educator.
2. I use Twitter to talk to friends and family
3. I use Twitter to find business customers.
4. I use Twitter to form a professional network
5. I use Twitter to send out and share information.
6. I use Twitter to receive information.
7. I have more than one Twitter account so I can keep my personal and professional tweets separate.

Results:

7% of the respondents were not K-16 educators

93% of the respondents were K-16 educators

8% of the non-K16 educators had separate Twitter accounts for personal and professional use.

24% of the K16 educators had separate Twitter accounts for personal and professional use

The goals for the use of Twitter by the non-K16 educators are illustrated in the graph below.

The goals for the use of Twitter by the K-16 educators are illustrated in the graph below.

The graphs were created using the NCES Create-A- Graph site.

A big thank-you to all who responded!

Twitter is not for email

During the past month or so, I have realized people are beginning to use Twitter as their main form of communication. I am a regular Twitter user and follower, but do not keep it open on my desktop all day. I use it how it is intended to be used-- to post quick items of interest or respond with a short message to someone seeking help on a topic. And I think carefully before I answer, to determine whether the response is only useful for the questioner (and DM the answer) or if others might also benefit from the answer (and reply with the @questioner). I try not to clutter up the list with responses that are meaningless to most others. That is part of the Twetiquette (Twitter etiquette).

(Addendum: I was not implying above that people should not post "meaningless" (read "fun") items to Twitter. What I was referring to is the practice of replying to a post via an @username on the list when the actual answer only makes sense to the person who asked the question. It often does not make sense when one sees only an answer.)

I am starting to receive some of the reference questions I receive regularly from educators via Twitter. The direct messages from Twitter show up in my email inbox, and I then have to go open my Twitter client, locate the DM, and respond to the questioner.

It is easy to ask a question in 140 characters, but not so easy to answer with anything meaningful in that number of characters. So, I wind up DM'ing three or four separate messages to the questioner, including having to shorten a URL or two in the Twitter messages.

Twitter is not the place for that kind of communication, in my opinion. If you have a question that you want answered which you know will require me to search the Web and do some research, please don't send it via Twitter.

I am easy enough to find on the Web, and, if you don't have it, here is my email address: kathy@kathyschrock.net

I am always glad to help, but not always in 140-character bursts!

Searching the Twitterverse

Since I very rarely visit the official browser-based Twitter site, finding it better for my workflow to run a computer-based client called twhirl, I had forgotten about the search tools available on the official Twitter site.

One of my concerns about Twitter is the amount of information that seems to be non-permanent. My Twitter feed is constantly flowing with all types of great information from my ed-tech PLN, and there are times that I want to get back to something from a month ago. (In addition, I also would like to see what the rest of the world is tweeting about, too!)

Twitter has a robust advanced search page which I recommend you try out.

As you can see from the screenshot below, it is easy to limit or broaden your search by filling in multiple pieces of information.

Screenshot courtesy of twitter.com, 2/14/09

In addition to the advanced search page, Twitter also offers a handy list of operators you can use right from the simple search box to conduct a search.

Once you conduct a search, you can easily choose to add the RSS feed for that search to your newsreader (Bloglines, Netvibes, Google Reader, etc.) to follow that person, topic, or even just be notified when a word that you are interested in is included in a tweet.

Screenshot courtesy of twitter.com, 2/14/09

Take some time to conduct complex searches using the Twitter advanced search page or conduct a search and aggregate it for "watching". At least you are guaranteed each entry is short and quick to read!

Why Twitter? Of course!

I tried Twitter a few months ago and did not "get it" and I stopped using it. I picked it back up this weekend, and today I had that "a-ha" moment and realized why I will continue to use it.

I discovered a neat techno-trick today. I had a 118 MB, 84 slide PowerPoint presentation that I to move into someone else's template and it was not going well. So, I simply saved the presentation as JPEGs, created a photo album in PowerPoint with the organization's template as the background and imported the JPEGs of the slides, and just resized the JPEGs on the slides so their logo showed. Imagine my surprise, after saving this new presentation, to realize that the 188 MB PowerPoint presentation was now only 5.6 MB! I don't know why, but, in case you are interested, here are the steps again.

1. Save your large presentation as JPEGs which creates a folder with each slide as its own JPEG.
   
2. Open a new presentation and choose to create a photo album in PowerPoint, choose the folder of JPEGs as your "photos" and then save that photo alubum.
   
3. Miraculously, the slide show is much smaller than the orginal!
   

So, usually when I have a techno-discovery I go charging out of my office to share the news with someone-- a teacher, secretary, or even a 6th grader if they will listen. No one is usually very interested. However, today I went right to Twitter to share my discovery with people who ARE interested!

I have figured out the power of Twitter (for me) is the ability to share my ideas and thoughts with like-minded individuals who DO get excited about geeky techno-discoveries and enjoy sharing their own, too!

w00t and thanks to my Twitter buddies!