Discussion
Getting Started with Twitter
I have been avoiding Twitter like it's the plague, but this resource brought up some really valid points that make me want to plug into the community. I guess I suffer from not knowing where to start. I am a preservice teacher so I don't have any one county or district to plug into. What tips would be good to getting my feet wet?
Comments
Karen Chichester
on May 30 2011
at 16:14
Getting Started with Twitter
I'd love to help you get started. First it is all about who you follow. I have created a number of lists on my twitter page of people who I follow. http://twitter.com/kchichester. I have one list dedicated to NWP people http://twitter.com/#!/list/kchichester/nwp . Any of these would be good folks to follow. I suggest you visit each person's Twitter page and see what things they post. This will help you select who to follow. I started by following 25 and now I follow 725 most of whom are educators.
Once you've chosen who to follow, sit back and read their posts for a bit. Read the articles they link to. Feel free to post any comments or questions that you have about their posts. Start a conversation. You'll discover that everyone in on in the education community of Twitter is really helpful. As you feel comfortable, start following the people that respond to those you are following. Another way to find quality people to follow is to look at the people your initial group of people follow.
To aid in buliding your network, be sure to complete your profile and be sure to state that you are an educators so that fellow educators will follow you back. Additionally, I suggest that you do not protect your tweets. A number of us won't follow people who protect their tweets. Twitter is about openness and sharing. Protecting your tweets hinders the interaction.
If you want to jump start your involvment, participate in #engchat on Mondays at 7pm Eastern. @mrami2 is the host/creator and an NWP TC from Philadelphia. She is a great Twitter Resource Person. She has a piece here on Digital Is... about how she started #engchat. http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/1802
As you network grows. consider using a Twitter Client like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to help you organize your tweets. I find this helps me a lot.
Remember to think of Twitter as a river that you can dip in to as you wish. Don't try to read everything or you will drown.
I hope these ideas give you a way to start tweeting. Feel free to follow me on Twitter and to contact me with any questions.
Stephanie Barker
on Jun 04 2011
at 06:55
Getting Started with Twitter
Thank you. That was really helpful. I'm hoping to get plugged in using Twitter so I can start contributing more at Digital Is. Those are really great tips to make it a less intimidating process so I won't be inundated with information overload and will be able to follow some worthwhile contributors.