Beginning Guide to Twitter

What is a Tweet?

A tweet is a short message that can have up to 140 characters. It is sent from a person’s Twitter account which can be accessed in numerous ways. Strangely, most people don’t send tweets from the Twitter.com website; they use third party applications which offer more functionality.

Anatomy of a Tweet

A tweet can certainly only contain text such as, “I just ate pizza for lunch.” However, tweets relevant for professional development have three main parts.

• Short message such as, “I just found a great language arts lesson plan!”
• Link to the main content. Since a tweet can only have 140 characters, most tweeters include a link to the main content. In the example above, a link would be provided to take you to the lesson plan. In addition, links are almost always shortened using a URL shortening service such as goo.gl. These services take a long website address and squash it down to as few characters as possible. When you only have 140 characters to work with, you don’t want the majority to be a used for a link.
• Hashtags. See Hashtags below.

So, a typical tweet contains: short message, link, hashtag.

Hashtags

Hashtags provide a way to search millions of tweets and find content relevant to you. Here’s how it works. In the tweet message, the author types # plus a key search word. An example would be #edtech. Then, users around the world can search Twitter for “#edtech.” All recent tweets with #edtech will be found.

Hashtags are the key to finding relevant content. Over the years, educators have started using common hashtags to help build a learning network. It’s important to know anyone can create a hashtag by typing # and then any word. So, in theory, I could type, “#thisismyveryownhashtag.” However, remember, a hashtag is a search tool and unless someone is searching for #thisismyveryownhashtag, they won’t find my tweet.

Over the years, common educational hashtags have emerged to help teachers find relevant content. Example are #elemchat for elementary teachers and #mathchat for math teachers. For a huge list, check out this post.

Easiest Way to Find Content without Joining Twitter

Advanced Twitter users utilize third party applications such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. You can easily search specific hashtags within these programs. However, if you want to start out slow, go to TweetChat.com. Then, in the URL address bar, type “room/hashtag. For example, the full URL will look like this: http://tweetchat/room/elemchat or http://tweetchat.com/room/edtech. Notice you do not include the #. Press ENTER and a steady stream of tweets will appear. Make sure you bookmark this page so you can return to it easily.

Finding Good Stuff

Now that TweetChat is working away, searching for your chosen hashtag, what do you do? Notice that most tweets have the three parts discussed above: short message, link, hashtag. Scan the page to find an interesting message. Then, click the link and see what you find. Sure, some of the content will be duds. Don’t get discouraged… you are sure to find some gems.