Twitter for Teachers and for ASB - CADA Convention 2014

The 21-Day Twitter Challenge was created by Carl Hooker. Mr. Hooker is the Director for Instructional Technology in the Eanes Independent School District in West Lake Hills, TX, and is also the founder of iPadpalooza. He’s AWESOME, and you can find his original blog post here:

Carl Hooker's original "21-Day #TwitterGuide4Beginners Challenge - March 2013

Mr. Hooker originally created this checklist/challenge in March 2013. Technology changes so rapidly that I decided to revise and update the list to reflect changes that have happened in the last year, along with own personal experience with Twitter.

Day 1 – Go to Twitter, create your account and follow people with similar interests. It’s also important to put some basics about yourself in your profile. These can be a mix of professional and personal, but know like anything else, there’s a character limit so make it work. Your profile is how others will see your interests and make connections.

You can see my profile here: https://twitter.com/rippolito

You can keep it simple like my friend Matt Soeth: https://twitter.com/matthewsoeth

The coolest twitter profile belongs to Hillary Clinton: https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton

Day 2 – Figure out how to change your egghead picture into a nice catchy profile picture. The best profile picture is one that looks like YOU, but it could represent your passion or your brand as well.

Day 3 – Lurk and figure out how to favorite something.

Day 4 – Retweet someone else’s tweet. RT'ing tweets help to share great things with a wider audience. Think of a RT like adding a megaphone onto a megaphone.

Day 5 – Find a good mobile app to use twitter on your mobile phone or device of choice. Mobile apps change regularly. Right now for me, the best app I use is simply the official Twitter app. My friend Matt Soeth is a fan of HootSuite.

Day 5.5 (Ron added this one) - Sign up for NutshellMail. This is how I usually keep track of what's happening on Twitter. It shows you what your last tweet was, any interactions you've had with others, and the activity of everyone you follow. It's totally customizable, too. You can get these e-mails sent to you once a week, once a day, once an hour! It's up to you.

Day 6 – Compose your first official tweet. Make it a good one and make it relevant to what you do. Share something going on in your work life.

Day 7 – Use Twitter to share a link from an interesting website or blog you discovered, maybe something your school or district is doing, or something from a colleague. Twitter will automatically shorten the URL for you, so you don't have to worry as much about going over your 140 character limit.

Day 8 – Figure out how to tweet a photo. (this is easiest from a mobile device)

Day 8.5 - If you have Instagram, connect your Instagram account to your Twitter account. This is how I tweet out most of my photos. I love Instagram!

Day 9 – Mention someone in a tweet. Remember, they don’t know you are trying to talk to them unless you mention them with the “@” symbol and their handle. Also, know that anyone can see this. Here's an example:

Twitter user @yesca posted this after hearing Mike Smith Live speak at her school. However, none of her followers will see this message in their individual Twitter feeds, unless they follow both @yesca and @mikesmithlive (similar to Facebook where you will see interactions between two Facebook friends appear on your Facebook feed). She meant for this to be seen by all 296 of her followers, but chances are they won't see it. She could have made it easier for them to see by adding a period at the beginning:

.@mikesmithlive inspired me to follow my dream on helping children w disabilities and cancer (-:

If you are mentioning someone's username at the beginning of a tweet, and you are talking about them rather than talking to them, insert a period first.

Day 10 – Direct Message (DM) someone. This is a short, private message that is like email, so it won't appear in any public feed. If a determined person REALLY wanted to access your DM data (Andrew Breitbart accessed photos that Congressman Anthony Weiner sent via DM), they probably still could, so be cautious.

Day 11 – Create a hashtag (#) and find one to follow. Ours is #cada2014. You can use a tool like tagboard.com to follow the same hashtag across multiple social media platforms.

Day 12 – Tweet from more than one device to test your diversity (will accept phone, tablet, laptop, desktop or all of the above)

Day 13 – Start to learn Twitter slang like RT, DM, MT, #FTW, from some resource like this: Twitter Dictionary

Day 14 – Post three tweets during this day. Spread them out over the course of the day. You can use a tool like TweetDeck to schedule tweets in advance. Make one of them a famous quote that you love. (Carl Hooker says "post 5 tweets," and I'm going to respectfully disagree with him, because I sometimes get turned off by people who clog up my Twitter feed. If you're going to tweet a lot in one day, do it with purpose).

Day 15 – Don’t click on the link in your DM that says either “People are saying bad things about you” or “LOL. I was laughing about this video about you.” This is spam, and usually means one of your friends got hacked (in order to DM, someone needs to follow you, and you need to follow them back). Politely message your friend to let them know this.

Day 16 – Have a twitter conversation with someone that you’ve never met in person. This could be as little as a response, but see how long you can make it go. My favorite new Twitter friend is @alicekeeler. She's awesome!

Day 17 – Participate in a “Twitter chat” one night. Here are "13 Great Twitter chats every educator should check out" from THE Journal.

Day 18 – Test your Twitter cleverness – Post a tweet that is longer than 140 characters, however, use clever short-cuts and lingo to make sure you message fits. (like “4″ instead of “for” to save characters)

Day 19 – If you haven’t yet, post your 100th tweet.  If you are short, get to work! If you already have at least 100 tweets, take a day off. You have earned it. Your tweet count includes @ mentions as well, so 100 tweets is actually very attainable. I would discourage you from excessive posting to your Twitter feed simply for the sake of posting, though. Make every tweet count.

Day 20 – Go back and follow more people and follow people who have followed you (disclaimer: I don't follow my students until after they've left my school, even if they are following me).  Oh yeah, and go back and unfollow all those celebs you followed in Day 1.

Day 21 – Sync your Foursquare, Pinterest, Scoop.it, LinkedIn, and/or Instagram accounts (but not Facebook) to your twitter account.

. . . and beyond. Create your own "Twitter chat." I'm going to throw #asbchat out there. Anyone? Anyone?