Sticky Notes to help understand Twitter

Twitter is the social network beast where educators are talking online. Connected educators and specialized hashtags have made it a gold mine of resources and ideas. 

Here is a concise list of some of the best hashtags on Twitter for education from Alan November. 

But with that said... Twitter is NOT THAT EASY TO WRAP YOUR HEAD AROUND.
​I too am baffled and troubled with it on almost a daily basis (I'll leave that for a future blog post though).

I can't resist though... have to share this video about how inane Twitter is.

Thanks @wstagnaro for sharing this. 

Since tweets are only 140 characters, they reek of brevity. And much like my podcast (shameless plug), they can only really say "Check This Out". (Check This Out is a podcast from Ryan O'Donnell and Brian Briggs, I really think you should check it out). 
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Here is in essence what you can do in 140 characters, tell people to:

• check out this link
• check out this quote
• check out this cat
• check out this whatever

or they can give some what we in the biz call "props"

• "cool post, thanks"
• "insightful quote, thanks"
• "funny cat video, thanks"

Getting teachers, students, and even harder yet, admins to understand this can be a challenge. So, here is a tool I have used to help them grasp Twitter. Sticky Notes. 

Step 1: Use sticky notes to get them to share an idea, thought, out question. they can write this down on the stick note and then they all post them on a wall. Have all the participants to do this then return to their seats. Then you browse the posts and share some insightful ones. 
Step 2: Then have them get up, take a second note and this time look over the first wave of posts. They should find one that can reflect on then write a response. This can be a question, praise or follow up

I designed by a Sticky Note tweet in Photoshop. 

Here is what it looks like and you can download a copy of this below. 

I then uploaded this file to Vistaprint.com and had them print and ship them. 

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Below is an example of one of these Twitter walls a group of educators made at a training in Orange County. 

twitter_sticky_notes.png
File Size:	24 kb
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Download File

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The Twitter sticky note file can be downloaded by clicking on the file to the left.