I am the Assistant Director of the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center at Northern Illinois University. In my role at NIU I am responsible for developing and offering programs and support for faculty and staff on teaching with technology and related topics, providing leadership on technology-related issues, and performing supervisory functions at the Center. With over a decade of experience in the field of online learning, I work closely with various units at NIU on addressing faculty needs related to online teaching.
I develop and provide training programs on web-course management systems as well as a variety of other topics related to online teaching and learning at Northern Illinois University. In addition, I also serve as an instructional designer, online course developer, and adjunct faculty for Valley Forge Christian College and adjunct faculty for Concordia University Chicago, Seattle Pacific University, University of Illinois, and the Illinois Online Network.
I'm using this microblog as my main communication portal and session resource repository for Faculty Summer Institute 2010 (FSI2010). Links to the interactive handouts for the sessions I'm leading are available above.
You can connect with me on Twitter and Diigo, among other places online.
Advanced Twitter Tips, Tricks & Tools
Have you gotten started with Twitter but now wondering what else is possible? What are hashtags? What are Twitter lists and how do get started using them? How can you easily post photos, videos, and links? What additional online tools and 3rd party apps can be integrated with Twitter to streamline posting of resources? This advanced hands-session explored the answers to these questions. Bring your own Twitter account.
Session tag: fsi2010twitter
Session short URL: bit.ly/fsi2010twitter2
Session bookmarks: bit.ly/fsi2010twitterlinks
Session archive: vimeo.com/11875121
Objectives
- Define what hashtags are and discuss why they are helpful on Twitter
- Create and follow a Twitter list
- Create Twitter button for your blog, LMS, or other website
- Create Twitter widget to embed in blog, LMS, or other website
- Share additional and 3rd party apps that can be integrated with Twitter to streamline posting of resources
Hashtags
Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.
- Twitter Fan Wiki / Hashtags - explanation of what hashtags are and how to use them on Twitter
- The Mystery of Twitter Hashtags
@Replys
@Replys are public responses to Twitter posts. Include a users Twitter username anywhere in the tweet immediately preceded by the @ symbol, such as: @fsi. The user then will see the public mention and their username becomes a direct link to their main Twitter page.
Posting Links
- bit.ly - shorten, share, and track your links
- bitly.Pro - Brand your short links. Get a real-time view of how your content is being distributed across Twitter and Facebook and services like e-mail, SMS and Instant Messenger
- ShortSwitch - URL shortening service that allows you to use your own domain or subdomain
Posting Photos
- TwitPic - easily share photos on Twitter
- TweetPhoto - real-time photo sharing platform for the social web. Instantly share photos on Twitter and Facebook.
- Twitgoo - quick, easy, reliable, and safe way to share images for Twitter. Upload your pictures here or from hundreds of applications directly to Twitter.
Posting Video
- TwitVid - easily share videos on Twitter
- Vimeo - upload / share larger videos, including HD; creates short URL of video that can be copied/pasted to post into a tweet
- Screenr - create screencasts for your followers as easily as you tweet. Just click the record button and you’ll have your ready-to-tweet screencast in seconds
Polling
- PollDaddy - create a poll and send it to your Twitter followers in seconds
- twtpoll - feedback tool that helps you to conduct polls/surveys on Twitter, Facebook or any other social media site
Groups
- GroupTweet - turns a standard Twitter account into a group communication hub where members can post updates to everyone in the group using direct messages. When the group account receives a direct message from a group member, GroupTweet converts it into a tweet that all followers can see.
- Twubs - Twitter groups built around content aggregated from #hashtags.
Online Apps
- Twitter Goodies - create embeddable widgets and buttons
- twitterfeed - feed your blog (or any RSS feed) to Twitter
- HootSuite - manage multiple Twitter feeds from single web interface
- PingVine - free service that takes an Atom or RSS feed from your blog, lifestream or favorite website and posts it to Twitter, Ping.fm or Identi.ca
- Ping.fm - update your status n all your social networks at once
- twitRand(); - select a random Twitter follower, friend, or retweeter
- TweetChat - follow tweets for a specific hashtag easily online
- Blackbird Pie - create embeddable version of a tweet
- QuoteURL - group different Twitter updates from different people into a single page that has a permanent URL or embed
- Twapper Keeper - online tool that archives tweets based on a given hashtag
Desktop Apps
- TweetDeck - personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.
- Tweetie for Mac - desktop Twitter client for Mac
Browser Plugins
- TwitterBar - allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your address bar; clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over it to see how many characters you have left.
Mobile Apps
- TweetDeck - personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.
- Tweetie2 for iPhone - official Twitter app for iPhone / iPod touch
- Echofon - when using in conjunction with desktop app, automatically keeps unread tweets in sync
- HootSuite - mobile optimized app version of web-based HootSuite
More Twitter Tips
- How to use Twitter for social learning
- Easy steps to create custom Twitter widget and embed in Blackboard
- Twitter Handbook for Teachers - great how-to guide for teachers getting started with Twitter
- Twitter for Learning - 44 great articles
- 10 ways to archive your tweets
- Incorporating a backchannel in a presentation or lecture
- 100 educators to follow on Twitter
- 10 ways you can use Twitter lists
- 50 ways to use Twitter in the college classroom
- 25 interesting ways to use Twitter in the classroom
- 30+ ways to create Twitter groups
- Twitter Experiment (UT Dallas) - Monica Rankin, professor of History at UT Dallas, wanted to know how to reach more students and involve more people in class discussions both in and out of the classroom.
- Summary of Twitter Experiment at UT Dallas - informal summary by Monica Rankin of her use of Twitter in the classroom
- Twitter Tips for Teachers and Educators
- 100 Twitter Tips, Apps, and Resources for Teachers on Twitter - how to get started with Twitter, ways to use it in an educational setting, and tools to help you use it better
Find all session bookmarks at bit.ly/fsi2010twitterlinks
Cite this session/handout as:
Rhode, J. F. (2010, May 18). Advanced Twitter Tips, Tricks and Tools. Presented at Faculty Summer Institute on Teaching Technologies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
