Educational Technology and Professional Development: Teacher's Step by Step Guide to Creating a New Twitter Account by Gary Feltman

Benefits for Educators: connections, collaboration, resources and professional development opportunities

Twitter Basic Vocab:

Tweet: Message which may include link or hashtag, 140 characters or less
Hashtag: Word or phrase following "#" created/used as trend, search, discussion, or chat
Retweet: To take someone's message and tweet it
Followers: Who is following you
Following: Who you follow
Mention: Put someone's handle in a tweet
Handle: Twitter name following "@"
Favorites: Tweets marked as "favorites" for later retrieval
Lists: A feature to organize handles without following

Twitter Account: Personal, Public, and/or Both?

Public if you're okay with everyone seeing your profile, tweets, followers, and following
Public if who you follow is professional and appropriate
Public if your actions/tweets/posts are professional and appropriate
Personal (private) if you don't want public seeing profile, tweets, followers, and following
Personal if who you follow and/or their posts may offend someone
Personal if you have strong opinions and your actions/tweets/posts are not school appropriate
If you're not sure: Make account private for now
If you're unsure: Make two accounts, one professional (public) and one personal (private)

Basic Twitter Netiquette (Common sense suggestions if your account is professional & public)

If you wouldn't say it in a classroom, don't post it on Twitter
If you wouldn't post it in your classroom, don't post it on Twitter
Conversations with students should be public
Avoid following controversial people/organizations
Resource: Twitter Etiquette: 24 Guidelines http://heidicohen.com/twitter-etiquette/

Creating a Twitter Account (Adjusting Settings)

Go to www.twitter.com
Under "New to Twitter" type Name, Email, and Password & Click Sign up
For the next 6 settings updates, make sure you click "Save Changes" at the bottom.
Optional: For private account (Settings, Account) Check Box "Tweet Privacy/Protect Tweets"
Add two images: Photo (small pic) and Header (background)
Complete profile: Location (optional), Website (optional)
Complete profile: Bio (teacher, parent, movie-whiz, food expert, enjoy reading, biking...etc)
Update Email preferences: For now I suggest check "All activity related to you and tweets"
Update Email preferences: For now I suggest uncheck all in bottom two sections.

Twitter Basics & Information

Click your name "View Profile Page" to see your public profile page
To create a new Tweet: click blue box in top right corner
Click "Home" to see your feed.
The Complete Guide to Twitter: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19976874/MakeUseOfcom-The-Complete-Guide-to-Twitter

Getting Started with Your Twitter Account

Start by following 5-10 handles of interest (See Categories below)
See who they follow, and follow some more handles
Type in a hashtag of interest, click on the hashtag within a tweet, and browse the feed...
If within the hashtag search, the tweets appear of interest, click on Tweeter and follow
If you find the Tweet useful, RT (retweet) it, you'll have it on your "Tweets" for later
If you don't have time to read, but it appears interesting, "favorite" it, then find it later in "favs"
Browse, search, read, learn, apply, chat, share, and have fun!