Faculty and Staff Development Day (#celtss11): An Introduction to Twitter

Why use Twitter?

• Ambient intimacy: “Went to the store today…”

• Sharing news and commentary: twittering during presentations vs. blogging

• Breaking news and shared experiences: airplane in Hudson River

• Stay on top of trends

• Boost student engagement: http://mashable.com/2010/03/01/twitter-classroom/

How to use it?

Sign up for an account at http://www.twitter.com. Create a memorable, short username and account.

Compose short messages/posts: no more than 140 characters (known as “tweets”). Remember
messages are public (except if you make yours a private account). Find and subscribe to Twitter streams
(called following) by going on search.twitter.com.

One to categorize your posts is to attach a # tag symbol: denotes events (#celtss11); groups of people
(#faculty); Twitter memes (#FollowFriday).

Inform others of interesting urls (first shorten URLs through bit.ly.com or goo.gl). Send and receive
messages through a variety of ways: desktop computer, mobile phone, and websites. Search for others
by name or by peaking into other networks; look through the “Who to Follow” section.

Use the @symbol to place before username to send message or reference someone. If you like
someone’s post, select the retweet link by hovering over the post. Send a direct message to someone by
adding a d and the account name (d vmgonzalez) before the message (works only if recipient follows
you). For more tips, go to Twitter Basics: http://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics.

If you would like to tweet during the faculty and development day conference, remember to add the
#celtss11 tag after your posts.

Questions? Email vgonzalez@framingham.edu. Check out the library Twitter account at:
http://twitter.com/whittemorelib