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.
