For busy teachers who’ve followed the advice in our ‘Top Tips for Tweeting Teachers” post, it can be difficult to keep up with the resulting wave of Twitter followers, messages and, of course, tweets. The greater your PLN grows and the more fantastic contacts you make, the harder it can be to keep up with all that is going on in the Twitterverse! Try some of these great tools, all designed to make your Twitter experience quicker and easier to manage…
Tweet Later
One of the top tips we suggested for tweeting teachers was to tweet regularly throughout the day to make contact with as many followers as possible whenever they’re online. But in practice this can be tricky for busy teachers, who don’t always have time to log in periodically throughout the day. Tweet Later provides a fantastic solution – simply line up a variety of tweets and set them to be posted at intervals throughout the day – perfect! (You can even do it at the weekend and prepare all your tweets for the whole week in one go!)
Just Tweet It
Another of our top tips was to find as many users with similar interests as possible to maximise networking and information sharing opportunities. But this might be tricky for busy teachers who don’t have time to trawl through Twitter searches looking for other #edtech or #mlearning aficionados. Luckily, you can use Just Tweet It, a large and popular directory of Twitter users sorted by category, to find like-minded tweeps quickly and simply. Don’t forget to add your own account to the directory to make sure other users can find you too!
Group Tweet
A great tool for PLNs or events, Group Tweet allows multiple users to post to a single Twitter account. Use it to share the burden of contributing to a school Twitter account across a group of different teachers, cutting down on the time commitment required of each individual, or to allow different members of your PLN to contribute together to a feed about a particular event or topic.
Twittonary
The education world on Twitter is littered with exciting and bewildering hash tags and abbreviations, from #cpchat (connected principles chat) and #mlearning to #BYOD and #eltchat. It can be frustrating and time-consuming to trawl Google looking for definitions of hash tags you don’t recognise, but Twittonary makes it simple with definitions of Twitter related words conveniently collected in one place! The list is in its infancy but should quickly become an indispensible Twitter tool as more and more users add common definitions.
Tweet Beep
Perfect for busy teachers who don’t have time to be constantly checking for interactions and @mentions, Tweet Beep provides a clear, concise e-mail update service to let you know when other tweeters have mentioned you or your school. So you only need to log in when there’s something important you need to reply to!
Do you use Twitter tools? Let us know what you find most useful below!
Images courtesy of Flickr. Image 1, born1945. Image 2, Alexandre Dulaunoy