Last week, I attended a session at the CTLT on using Twitter. I came away with all kinds of ideas about how to use it in the classroom–and I’m psyched to keep thinking about those ideas!–but right now I’m still working on how to use it outside the classroom. When I run into people who are anti-Twitter, they usually say they don’t like it because it doesn’t appear to have a use. And that’s perhaps the biggest takeaway for me right now: I’ve had a Twitter account for a few years, but I didn’t really have a purpose for having it. I just wanted to be up on the new social media site; I wasn’t actually contributing anything to the community. Now, that needs to change.
I’m including below in this post several links to important tools for using Twitter effectively. Credit for compiling this list goes to Cheri Toledo, who ran the CTLT session I mentioned earlier and who also authored some of the content linked below.
- A Diigo list of Twitter tools and ideas
- Tweetdeck, an interface for using Twitter (as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and others)
- IceRocket, a search engine for blogs, tweets, and other social media
- WeFollow, a site which lets you find the most influential Tweeters in particular searchable categories (and also inspires some to wonder how influence is quantified and ranked!)
Erin Clark Frost 