tweet such things, but understand it does not fit my criteria for this job. Another example is quotes. Again, there are some great quotes but it does not have anything for me to continue learning.
Next there is a “Partial Hit” – These tweets may contain names of people, programs or resources but do not actually give a URL. If I don’t find someone else who tweets about the topic and includes a link, then I can always Google it and see what I find. An example might be, “Participating in a great session where they are talking about UDL and tools you can use to apply it to your lessons.” There is not a link here, but if I search UDL and lesson, I quickly find information about Universal Design for Learning and the criteria to use to make sure the learning is accessible to all students. Now I can dive in deeper later and find out what it is all about.
The ISTE conference started with pre-conference sessions, so I wanted to get my Twitter account ready before that. Since I was going to be monitoring many things at once, I decided to get set up with a Tweetdeck account at
www.tweetdeck.com. Using this tool instead of the actual Twitter page really helps once the tweets start flying. It allows me to monitor several hastags as well as my live feed on one page.
On Friday, June 24 I began my quest. I opened my Tweetdeck and searched for the #iste12 hashtag and added it as a column to my Tweetdeck screen.
The last category is a “Definite Hit” – The tweet contains information and a link to find out more. The link can take you to a blog post, a general website, a picture, a shared document in Google docs, notes in Evernote, presentations on Slideshare and Prezi, or a million other resources that could fill you in on what is going on. If I find that information to be good, I will bookmark it with my Diigo Social Bookmarking site account. An example of this type of tweet might be like this one from
Jennyluca: “ I made a single link to share all the web tools I will show today - So check out
http://t.co/4qT4VKm0#ISTE12”
Now that you understand my categories for tweets, let’s look at the process I use as I go through the list of tweets:
1. Read the tweet and decide which category it fits (fluff, partial, or definite hit).
2. If it is a partial or definite hit, then I would star it by using the favorite button in Twitter.
3. Now I can go back at a later time and look through my favorites to see if there is any good information that
will allow me to dig deeper.
Instantly I started seeing tweets about the conference. There would not be a ton of tweets yet, but there could still be some good information. Once the main conference started on Sunday night, it was like Christmas!
Although I wanted to learn and get good information, I did not want to sit in front of my Twitter account for four days. I knew that I would be able to check the hashtag several times a day. Tweets are organized with the most recent tweets at the top. When I would check, I started at the top and worked my way down. Sometimes I would go all the way back to the last time I accessed the tweets, other times, I would stick to the most recent. It became important to have a method to my madness for screening tweets. You will develop your own as you use this process, but let’s start with how I classify tweets.
The first category is “Fluff” - For all of you who tweet and say things like, “Well, here I am at ISTE, can’t wait to learn,” I love your enthusiasm, but it does not contain any links or information that may lead to learning. I am not saying not to
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I continue this process off and on throughout the conference. I am not going to read every tweet, but I will certainly get the main points.
Going back through the favorites is where we can hit pay dirt. When I find something that I want to keep, I use my Diigo account to save the link or information so I can access it when I need it.
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