All tweets on deck

Well what about TweetDeck? How did it go?

Was it really useful? How do you know?

TweetDeck is super, it helps me a lot,

I love the columns and never get caught.

When I began this inquiry project, I was already sold on the idea of Twitter. I was using it daily, creating a PLN of educators and finding lots of great information, ideas and food for thought. However, I was finding managing the information flow into my Twitter account overwhelming and did not think I was managing it well. Enter TweetDeck - a way to organize the flow of information and keep it manageable.

A PLN or personal learning network, is like differentiated learning. In Why Teachers Should Try Twitter, William Ferriter describes his path to individualized learning (as an educator) through Twitter. 

For educators who use this tool to build a network of people whose Twitter messages connect to their work, Twitter becomes a constant source of new ideas to explore. (Ferriter, 2010).

 In Nine great reasons why teachers should use Twitter, Laura Knight's reasons are all related to professional growth as a teacher:

• together we're better
• global or local: you choose
• self-awareness and reflective practice
• ideas workshop and sounding board
• newsroom and innovative showcase
• professional development and critical friends
• quality-assured searching
• communicate, communicate, communicate
• getting with the times has never been so easy

Will Richardson (2010) describes Twitter as a "network at my fingertips" for educators (p.86).

So, yes, yes, yes, I am sold on the idea of using Twitter for creating and keeping track of my PLN! I am all over differentiated learning for teachers. I am simply looking for a better way to keep track of it all!

Enter TweetDeck - a platform that allows me to manage the Twitter feeds I follow into columns. I can have columns for various hashtags that I wish to keep track of and can even add my Facebook account into it. Because I am using the Google Chrome add-on of TweetDeck, it shows up as a tab in my web browser which is very convenient. TweetDeck simply enhances my ability to use Twitter and allows me to better take advantage of it.



Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin.

Where am I?

I am still on my web, but where are you?

The spider asks as I wander through.

You've tried so many things on your great big web,

When will you be done? the spider said.

I feel like I need to check in with my progress for this class, and see how I am doing and if I am still on track.

I have been very consumed with creating a video at the moment with students from the environment club at the school. We are putting the final touches on our entry for the BC Green Games. It is created in iMovie, which is not technically Web 2.0, so I am not sure if I should include it as part of my project here.

Anyways . . . where am I?

Facebook

I have set up my Facebook account and have added a bunch of friends. I find it is mostly just something else to check each day for news. I am not interested in most of the items my friends post, but do enjoy seeing the occasional fun photo, etc. I have posted some general questions to my friends and a few pictures of my kids. I have also commented on other's posts.

The most useful part of Facebook for me, so far, is the group that I belong to for the climbing gym where my son trains. I like that the group shows up on my home page and I can immediately see if there is anything new posted by the little number that shows up. This was very useful when there was snow and the gym was cancelled.

I can see how the "group" function would be useful as a school to have for parent communication (elementary) or even for students (secondary).

Twitter or more importantly, Tweetdeck

Part of my inquiry was finding a better way to manage Twitter. I believe I have found that with Tweetdeck.

Integral to my use of Tweetdeck is my installation of Google Chrome. At one point last year, I had actually installed Tweetdeck, but didn't like the fact that it sat on the desktop of my computer. With Chrome, the Tweetdeck plug-in allows it to sit in the web browser on the start-up page. I like this much better.

Tweetdeck has allowed me to organize the information I gather from Twitter. I have also loaded my Facebook account into Tweetdeck, so I can also see my Facebook news feed. I am not sure why the Facebook posts I see are not the same in Tweetdeck as in Facebook. I also can't see the "groups" from Facebook, which means I need to open up Facebook separately as well.

But, overall, I like Tweetdeck. I currently have the following columns:

• Facebook news feed
• Home - which is all the people I follow on Twitter
• #edtech
• #tlchat
• #pbl - for Project Based Learning, but seems to be some sort of foot fetish thing as well
• #frimm - French immersion
• @me - for tweets where I am mentioned
• inbox - for direct messages to me

I can easily skim through the columns and click on things that interest me for more information. I am not feeling as overwhelmed with Twitter now.

Social Bookmarking

I continue to use Diigo personally for keeping track and organizing links, but after exploring the education side of it and finding no filters to the outside world, I don't think I would use it with students.

I have just begun using Pinterest and find it very appealing because it is so visual. I believe this would also appeal to students, so will explore a bit further and see how I might use Pinterest with students.

Blogging

I have explored Kidblog, which I like, and Blogmeister, which I don't. I am excited to have enticed a teacher to begin blogging with her Grade 3/4 class. Next week, I will help her set up Kidblogs for her class.

Still to come:

• Voki
• Glogster
• Voicethread

Stay tuned . . .

Lovin' the deck!

A deck for your tweets, what's that all about?

Sounds like you're balancing words on your snout!

TweetDeck is great, it puts things in a line,

Instead of things wasting too much of my time.

So yes, I am really loving TweetDeck! I actually tried TweetDeck sometime last year when I began using Twitter and didn't like the fact that I had to open up another program on my computer. However, because I am using the Chrome browser, I can now easily open TweetDeck whenever I open up another tab on my browser.

When I started using TweetDeck to follow Twitter, I included Facebook to be included. However, my Facebook messages were all mixed into my general Twitter feed which was kind of weird.

I have since made several columns in TweetDeck, to follow different hashtags of interest and just figured out how to create a column for my Facebook feed as well. This will make TweetDeck even more useful as I won't need to open Facebook to see what is new.

Tweetdeck

You need something else to look after the tweets?

Twitter isn't enough to manages your peeps?

Tweetdeck might be a better way for me,

I'll give it a try - just wait and see.

Although exhausted from a full day of work and then two hours at the bank, I did manage to play around a bit last night.

I added Tweetdeck to my Google Chrome browser and played around with it for a while.  I must say that I like how it is embedded right into my Chrome interface and easily accessible when I make a new tab in my browser.

I imported my stuff from both Twitter and Facebook, as I thought this would save me some time as I would only need to check into one place.  However, I didn't like how the Facebook and Twitter were mixed up together so moved the Facebook data.  I think I will play some more, having only my Twitter feeds in the Tweetdeck before trying to add Facebook again.

I like the way the columns are set up in Tweetdeck and how easy it is to add hashtags or lists as separate columns.  I didn't import any of my lists from Twitter as I am not that pleased with them - I may delete them completely and restart with some new columns in Tweetdeck.

I do think this is going to be a better way to manage the information flow in Twitter and I can add new columns as I want to follow various interests.

Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweeeeettt!!!!!!!!!!!

I've heard my bird friends who often say tweet,

A pleasant sound, it is always short and sweet.

These tweets are quite different, I say to my friend,

Though they are always very quick to get to the end.

One of the things I would like to explore with this inquiry project is how to get a better handle on Twitter.  I began following Twitter last year at about this time.  Right now I am following 94 other people, which really isn't many compared to some others who follow hundreds or thousands.  However, I find it quite overwhelming and difficult to keep track of what is going on.  I am looking for something to streamline the information that comes to me via Twitter.

I know that Twitter has some internal functions to organize things better and their are also applications like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite that can help with this process.  I also just found out about Seesmic Desktop, so I will need to check it out too.

Stay tuned!  Hmm . . . just a quick look to create the hyperlinks showed me that some of these can manage other social media info as well.

References:

Brogan, C. (2009, August 14). How to manage Twitter [Web log message].  Retrieved from http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-to-manage-twitter/