Twitter: An Overview

The ongoing discussions in our learning experience will be conducted on Twitter.  Users are limited to 140 characters for each of their posts (called “tweets” in Twitter parlance), which has the effect of making a tweet more like a text message than a traditional blog post.  This also makes the platform ideal for mobile devices, which is why it’s been chosen as a medium for our group discussions.  To become more acquainted with Twitter, please do the following:

1.    Sign up for a Twitter account. [skip to #2 if you already have an account that you’d like to use for this learning experience]

a.    Go to http://twitter.com

b.    Click the Sign Up button

c.    Fill out the required information

d.    Click Create My Account

2.    Post the username of your Twitter account in the comments area below. We will be collecting all of the usernames in our group and posting them in the right column of this blog.

3.    Make sure to “Follow” everyone in our group.  You can feel free to follow anyone you’d like, but please be sure to follow all of your colleagues here.  As noted above, this list will be housed in the right column of this blog.  We will also be creating a Twitter list, making it even easier to follow everyone’s contributions.

4.    Learn the difference among different types of tweets.  If you simply type something and click “Tweet,” the message will go out to all of your followers.  If you put an @ followed by a user’s name, the only people who will see the tweet are that person and anyone who is following both of you.  If you send a direct message to someone, the only person who will see the tweet is the person to whom you sent it. 

5.    Save the hashtag #edcmdata -- you will type or paste it after each one of your tweets. After each of your tweets, please make sure that you type or paste the hashtag “#edcmdata.”  A hashtag is way of organizing tweets into an easily searchable form.  If you search (or click on) the hashtag “#edcmdata,” every single tweet that included this hashtag would show up.  As a result, a conversation among people interested in a specific topic can easily take place, and this conversation will be archived on a weekly basis and posted to our blog.

6.    Enjoy the experience! Our topic expert will be tweeting a thought-provoking question at the beginning of each week, and you can feel free to respond to it however you’d like.  Share resources that you’ve come across that address the topic (but be sure to shorten your URL to save space!), post videos and images -- the possibilities are limitless.  Most of all, make sure to engage with one another! 

You might find the following useful:

The Twitter Guidebook, Mashable

Newbie's Guide to Twitter, CNET

Twitter in Plain English, CommonCraft

The Best Twitter Apps for Your Mobile Phone, Digital Inspiration