hs2016

I hope you have enjoyed exploring some aspects of twitter during the past 10 days and could find valuable information resources. All the materials are available online on the blog page, and you can work through at your own time.

At this point I thought it would be nice to offer some suggestions about how you can start using Twitter in your context.

Use Hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to make your area of interest, and the materials you produce more visible. You may review the resources presented on Day 6 to learn more about.

Publicity
Twitter is a great way to raise awareness of events your Organisation or Department may be hosting. You can then LiveChat the event to further raise awareness or monitor Twitter chat from events you can’t physically attend. Twitter is also a very good medium for helping you to reach out to new audiences.

Communication
Twitter is of course a communication medium, but it can actually be of great use in keeping the members of the sub-groups within your organisation up to date with your activities. You can also use Twitter to communicate more easily with students, researchers and part-time staff who may not always be kept up to date with activities through normal channels.

Twitter and Blogging
These two forms of social media work very well together. It is a good idea to keep your blogs managed in such a way that the essential content of each blog can easily be tweeted. Note that the Zentrum für Lernen und Lehren is running a own Blog Platform which is free to all staff members.

Feedback
I’d really welcome your feedback, so I can improve the programme and perhaps run future courses like this or provide other forms of micro-content to explore at your own pace on other aspects of E-Learning or social media!

The Future
Now you’ve joined the #HSLU10DoT community, it would be great if we can sustain the conversations and the community around E-Learning and social media at HSLU.

The @ZentrumLL account for Zentrum Lernen und Lehren draws together information and conversations around digital learning, teaching and assessment at HSLU. Keep following for information about activities and maybe upcoming courses on digital learning topics within the HSLU and beyond. Do message us to ask questions, engage in conversations or draw our attention to anything you think we should know about!

I look forward to interacting with you in future – do keep in touch!
All the best
@cinigabellini

We’re all busy people, and Twitter should suit the fast pace of our work, not hinder it!
I decided to change the online course to a self-paced mode so you can move forward at your own pace, yes and build your “personal” version of ten days of twitter. For your convenience all daily posts are made available as a resource, see the schedule for an overview, which also work well as a stand alone reference and will enable to move in a exploration but also linear learning path. So feel free to either pick specific aspects of twitter that may interest you or continue on the daily information path. It is up to you whether you want to post tweets according the daily task, please keep in mind that the conversation and moderation components may be missing at this point, however twitter is an open medium and thus you still have opportunities to build up your twitter skills and make connections.
Please note that the subscription handling has also been reset, so you will not receive the daily posts by e-mail anymore.

I will be around for the next couple of days, if you have questions or want to share information leave a comment on this post.
All the best and keep on going with “your” #HSLU10DoT version.
@cinigabellini

You’ve send a few tweets over the last five days – hopefully you’ve found plenty in your everyday routine as an academic which would be of interest to others, whether they are your Anglia Ruskin colleagues, peers in your field, other professions within or beyond Higher Education, such as policy, journalism, or publishing, or to the general public.

But it really would be hard work to generate all the material yourself to feed your followers with regular, interesting tweets! Fortunately, you don’t have to – you can retweet the tweets of others. It’s sort of like forwarding an email, but to everyone who’s following you. They see the content of the original tweet, who it came from originally, and perhaps also a contextualising comment from you. By doing this, you’re performing a valuable service:

• to your followers, by sifting the stream of information available to them, filtering out what’s potentially interesting to them, and also by making them aware of potential new contacts they can add to their network. They may already follow the person you’ve retweeted, in which case you’re bringing their attention to something they may have missed the first time. They may not yet follow the original tweeter, in which case, you’ve made available to them information they may not have had access to, and given them a new contact to follow.
• to the people you follow, by amplifying their message and spreading it outside their network (and also possibly putting them in touch with new contacts)
• to you, by displaying to others that you’re well connected to interesting and important people, and that you are a discerning judge of what information is interesting and significant!

To retweet a message, you simply click on the ‘retweet’ button which appears below each tweet when you hover over it.

The message will then appear in your followers’ Twitter streams as if it appeared from the original sender, even though they may not follow them (although they might!). The tweet that they see will be marked with ‘username retweeted’ in small lettering, so if they look, they can tell that it was you who retweeted it.

However, you can add a comment before retweeting it:

Adding a comment alters the appearance of the retweet on your news feed, and Twitter embeds the original tweet below your comment:

This makes the tweet come from your account, rather than the original sender, making it clear that it’s you who has chosen to pass this information on.

Remember that to use Twitter effectively to promote your own work, you need to update frequently with interesting content to gain a following, and you also need to reciprocate and promote the work of others. No one wants to read or retweet a Twitter feed which is just broadcasting announcements about itself!

You’ve sent some tweets, followed people and hopefully gained some followers of your own. Some people prefer to listen more than they tweet, which is fine – the only thing to consider is, the more you say about your interests and interact with others, the more people will know what kind of information might be useful to you, and direct relevant things your way. It’s a way of fine-tuning your Twitter feed as well as providing useful information to others.

Sometimes you might want to address a tweet to someone – it will be visible to other followers, but you want to catch a particular person’s attention with it. This might be because:

• you are replying to or responding to one of their tweets
• you are asking them a question
• because you think they might be particularly interested in the information passed on in your tweet and want to make sure it catches their eye
• you mention them in a tweet and want them to know, for example, if you retweet one of their tweets, or are talking about their work

It may also be that you don’t follow that person, or they don’t follow you, but you still want to catch their attention with one particular tweet: they will still see it if you include their @username

For example:

• Hey @cinigabellini, enjoyed your presentation! Do you know @usablelearning’s work on this subject?
• Giving a talk at your uni next week, @cinigabellini – are you around for coffee? Would be great to meet up!
• Great resources on using social media in teaching – of interest, @ZentrumLL – http://www.edudemic.com/guides/
• Reading @hrheingold’s chapter on crab dectection: some intriguing ideas! http://rheingold.com/books/net-smart/
• I recommend this too! via @markwarnes2 – a good read on digital scholarship! http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/DigitalScholar_9781849666275/book-ba-9781849666275.xml

To call someone’s attention to a tweet with an @ mention, you use their username or ‘handle’ preceded by a @ sign. For example, to let me know you’ve mentioned me, you would include ‘@cinigabellini’ in the tweet. If you click the ‘reply’ option which appears in grey in each tweet, Twitter will automatically insert the person’s @name into your tweet (we’ll look at the other options that appear in each tweet later!)

Note – as the @ sign is reserved for marking people’s handles, you can’t use it as an abbreviation for ‘at’, for example, ‘let’s meet @6pm @cafe’ – it will treat these as an @message, and it’s likely that someone, somewhere, will have chosen @6pm or @cafe as a handle!

A small but important point is where you place the @username. If you are responding to a tweet, using the ‘reply’ button, then Twitter will automatically begin your tweet response with the @username, and you can then type the rest of your message. As a standard, tweets beginning with  someone’s @username, are only visible to your followers, this may be useful when you don’t want a wide audience to see the interactions, if it’s not going to be understandable out of context, or of interest to them but just cluttering up their feed. If you want the tweet to have a wider audience, then you could include the @username later on in your tweet as part of the sentence, for example: ‘reading @ZentrumLL’s blog post about Twitter – some useful tips!’

Remember that Twitter is a very public medium, and whether you @message someone or not, your tweets will be visible to anyone who views your profile.

To see @messages directed at you, click on the tab marked Notifications with the bell icon, at the top of the screen.

They will also appear in your Twitter stream, but you may miss them there! Depending on your settings, you can also receive an email when someone @messages you. To set your account to email you when someone mentions you, click on Settings (accessed via your Profile Picture at the top) and then ‘Email Notifications’ in the left hand menu. You may wish to edit the Email Notifications anyway as the default settings may include things you don’t want or need.

Direct Messages

If you really want to send a message to just one person, but don’t want it publicly visible to anyone else, Twitter allows you to send them a DM or Direct Message, but only if that person follows you. Direct Messages on Twitter operate in the same way as other direct messaging systems, such as Facebook Messenger, for instance.

If you want to practice sending a Direct Message, feel free to contact me! If I’ve accidentally omitted to follow you, let me know!

Enjoy the conversations.
@cinigabellini

You’ve sent your first tweets, creating interesting and engaging content for your potential followers. The other side to Twitter, of course, is the stream of information brought to you by the people you follow. And if you follow people, chances are they will take a look at your profile and decide to follow you in return (which is why setting up a profile with some engaging tweets first was important!).

About following

One of the key features of Twitter is that unlike other platforms, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, following is not necessarily reciprocal – the people you follow may not be the people who follow you (although they might be!). There is no obligation to follow someone just because they follow you. Some people have a more-or-less even match of followers and following; others follow lots of people but don’t tweet much themselves and therefore don’t have many followers; and some tweeters, usually very well-known people or institutions, may have a large number of followers as they tweet a lot but don’t actually follow as many people, using Twitter more as a broadcast medium to get their message out there.

As an individual professional, you’re probably going to get the most benefit in the first instance for the first option, having roughly the same number of followers and following. Twitter works best as a dialogue, and this won’t happen if you’re doing all the talking, or have no one to talk to!

To follow someone, simply click on their profile (their name or picture) and click the ‘Follow’ button below their details:

How do you find people to follow?

When you first sign up to Twitter, it will suggest people for you to follow, or invite you to search for names or keywords, but this can be a bit hit and miss. Some people give up at this point, thinking that it’s all pop stars and people tweeting about their breakfast!

At this point, it might be useful to know who else is participating in the #HSLU10DoT programme, so I’ve compiled a list of everyone who sent the tweet I suggested yesterday, so you can find and follow each other!

Here are eight more suggestions to build a useful feed of information that might work well for you as an (e-)learning developer:

1. ‘Celebrity’ academics and media dons Following well-known people and commentators in academia will give you some ideas of how to build your profile and impact, as well as offering commentary on education policy, news on developments in Higher Education, access to their own network of followers and interesting material to retweet to your followers. You could follow Education researchers such Sandra Schön, Martin Ebner or academics such as Illona Buchem, Jochen Robes who tweet about digital education.
2. Professional Bodies For updates about events, news, policy, or funding opportunities, your  professional body will be very useful. Try for example the Swiss E-Learning of HE Community eduhub, or you can follow specific universities’ eLearning competence centers such as Universität Basel or FHNW, and of course ZentrumLL.
3. Funding Bodies For calls for funding and other news, follow bodies such as the german information portal e-teaching.org, Hochschulforum Digitalisierungor uk-based JISC
4. Academic and Professional Press Education press such as @TimesHigherEd, @InsideHigherEd or Online Learning Journal will give you access to general HE news stories which may interest you or your followers.

Following individual journalists too might be a way to hear about interesting stories or even raise your own profile in the press. Many journals also have their own Twitter accounts which they may use to interact with potential contributors or interviewees.

5. Colleagues in your discipline Following other colleagues in your field on Twitter is a fantastic way to network. Search for people you know or have heard of to see if they have a Twitter account. Search by name or by keyword, or import contacts from your LinkedIn account, or from your email account. Following the ‘backchannel’ of tweets around large annual conferences are a good way to find out who’s on twitter.
6. Public Engagement and Impact Following the university’s marketing and public engagement team and other researchers interested in impact will help you be aware of events which you might volunteer for, or interesting ways to present research to other audiences. Follow HSLU’s official twitter feed.
7. Associated services and professionals There are lots of people on Twitter who can offer you useful information, but aren’t in your profession. Follow librarians, disability advisers, employability advisers, learning technologists and researchers, learning and staff developers… all useful people to learn from and collaborate with, and stay in touch with what’s happening around the university!
8. Policy makers If you’re interested in government education policy, you could always follow individual politicians or the SBFI.

Twitter is partly about the information you tweet, but also about the information you gain from the people you follow. Spend some time reading your twitter feed to see what comes up!

More to explore

This section is a resource that you may want to return to later in the course. You may skip this section for the moment. How many people you follow is up to you, although perhaps 100 is a good number to aim for (not all today!), to ensure a useful stream of content. Think about what sort of information you want access to, and what sorts of tweeters are likely to offer it (see the list below for some suggestions). It is an organic process and will take time to build up, and don’t forget that you can always unfollow people if the content they tweet is not useful to you! The ‘follow’ button will simply turn to ‘unfollow’, giving you this option. There are ways to find out if you’ve been unfollowed, but generally people don’t bother to check!

Alternatively, you could mute certain people (some people post huge numbers of tweets which can swamp your feed) and occasionally visit their profile to catch up on their tweets. In some cases this is preferable to completely unfollowing them. More about this next week.

How to grow your Twitter feed from here.

Twitter will suggest people for you to follow based on who you’re currently following. This can be a bit random at first, as you’re not following many people so there’s nothing for its algorithm to work on. There are other ways to add people to your Twitter feed:

Snowball – look at the profile of the people you’re following – who do they follow, and who else is following them? You can see who’s following you, or anyone else, by going to your or their profile, and clicking on ‘followers’.

Retweets – people you follow will retweet things they think might be of interest to others. Keep an eye out for interesting retweets from accounts you don’t yet follow, and add them. We’ll cover retweeting in future Days.

Hashtags – especially around livechats or livetweeted events such as conferences. Joining a discussion around a hashtag is a good way to find more people interested in that topic or event. We’ll also cover hashtags in future Days.

#FF or #FollowFriday – this a convention on Twitter that on Fridays where you tweet the names of people you think are worth following. Watch out for these, or tweet your followers and ask them for recommendations!

Follows – you will be notified when new people follow you – look at their profile to see if they are someone you want to follow back. If you suspect one of your new followers is spam, you can ‘block’ them using the gear icon next to the ‘Follow’ button, and selecting ‘block’. It’s as well to do this, especially as people may be looking through your followers for ideas of who to follow, and it doesn’t look good if lots of your followers are spam!

Ready to tweet? Twitter only allows you to send 140 characters, which doesn’t seem much. Many people, especially in an HE context, who are new to Twitter aren’t sure what to say, or why updates about whatever they’re doing would be interesting to others. But there are actually many aspects of your day-to-day work that would be of very practical use to others. Have a look at some Twitter feeds from learning developers and see what kinds of information they share, to get an idea of how you really can say something useful and engaging in 140 characters.

What to tweet?

The appropriate tone for a professional Twitter account doesn’t need to be overly formal – you can be chatty and conversational, and allow your personality to come through. In fact, you’ll have to be a bit informal if you want to fit everything in, using abbreviations and even textspeak! Even if tweeting on behalf of a department or group, you need to be engaging rather than formal. Do remember though, if you’re tweeting in any professional capacity, that Twitter is a very public medium, and that your tweets can be kept by others, even if you delete them (more about this on Day 10). Don’t say anything you wouldn’t normally say openly in a work context.

Some examples of what you might tweet about:

• an article you’re reading that’s interesting or a book you recommend
• an online resource you’ve stumbled across
• a workshop or conference you’re going to – others may not have known about it, may want to meet you if they’re also going to be there, or may want to ask you about it if they can’t make it
• some insight on learning development work from an incident that happened today
• study advice or insights into how you teach a topic
• a question asked by a student or colleague that made you think
• slides from a talk which you’ve just uploaded online
• your thoughts on an education news story
• a funding, project or job opportunity you’ve just seen
• a digital tool or software you’re using or problem you’ve solved with it
• a typical day – an insight into a learning developer’s life or moral support
• your new publication or report which has just come out (there are ways of mentioning this gracefully!)

Sending a tweet

Sending a tweet is really easy – when you’re logged into Twitter, you’ll see a box in the middle of the screen at the top, which says ‘What’s happening?’ If you click in the box, you’ll be able to write your tweet and then click the ‘Tweet’ button. You can also use the feather quill pen icon in the top right of the screen to compose.

Remember – you’re only able to write 140 characters including spaces. A small counter below this box tells you how many characters you have left. It will stop you once you go over and highlight how many characters you need to delete. You’ll soon develop a suitably concise style, and learn the tricks to abbreviate your writing, such as using ‘&’ instead of ‘and’. This all adds to the informal tone.

Note:
If you already have an twitter account it is a good practice to let your followers know that you take part in a open course, so this first tweet can serve as an announcement. However, you may want to compose the tweet differently for your followers, please feel free to do so, make sure to include the hashtag #HSLU10DoT.

Over the next week, we’ll be sending various types of tweets. For today, though, just send a few simple messages over the course of the day, using the examples above. You could include the hashtag #HSLU10DoT in your tweets – again, we’ll explain why later! If you’re thinking of tweeting in an official capacity, then think about the balance of your own announcements to other information (Twitter is still a conversation, not an announcement service, and too much one-way, impersonal promotion will turn off your following!).

Looking forward to read your tweets.
@cinigabellini

Welcome to Twitter, and to #HSLU10DoT!

The first thing you need to do is to sign up to Twitter. You can see people’s tweets without an account, by viewing their profile or by searching for a keyword, as it’s a very public social media channel. Without an account, though, you won’t be able to join in the conversation, and that’s the first and main thing to learn about Twitter:

Twitter is a conversation

Setting up an account

Setting up an account on Twitter is the easy part! There’s still a few things to think about, though, in terms of creating an engaging and effective profile using

• your handle (@name), which people will use to identify and direct messages to you
• your avatar or profile picture, which is how people will pick your tweets out of their twitter feed, on a quick glance
• your identifying information, such as your location and personal website or webpage
• your ‘bio’ or strapline, which will sum up who you are and why people might want to follow you
• the overall look of your twitter profile, which makes it distinct and memorable when people view it

If you already have a Twitter account, then you could use this post to refine your profile and your overall aims and audience.

What purpose do you want to set up an account for? With Twitter, you can have more than one account (each linked to a different email address), as, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, it is not limited to single real life identities. Many people will start off with a personal, individual account to get used to Twitter, and then think about other ways in which they might use it to represent a group or service. For example, I’m both @cinigabellini for individual professional conversations, and also @HSLU10DoT for this programme! You might wish to set up an impersonal account to publicise your department, or other activity such as a conference team, journal, research group, module or service like this one @ZentrumLL.

If you don’t yet use Twitter, visit the site to set up an account.

• You’ll firstly need to enter a real name, email address and password to sign up and create an account. Different accounts will need separate email addresses.
• At the second stage, you need to think of a username, which will be your @name. This might be some version of your real name or, if your name is common and most variations of it have already been taken, you might think of a professional and memorable pseudonym which people associate with you in some way. Don’t worry – you can change this later without losing your followers or tweets, and you can also add your real name to your profile so that it’s identifiably you. Note that this username will be part of the twitter URL.
• The next steps of signing up on Twitter take you through finding people to follow, but I recommend you skip this step for now – we will look at it on Day 3!

Fill out your profile

The next thing you should do is start to fill out your profile, so that when people look at it, they will feel more encouraged to follow you.

1. Upload a profile picture. When skimming through a twitter feed of all the people they follow, an eye-catching profile picture will help them pick your tweets out. It could be of you, if you have a good, clear shot of your face (useful in identifying you when you meet followers in real life at conferences! Full body pictures work less well as at the size of a thumbnail image, it’s hard to pick out your face!). It could also be an abstract image which somehow reflects your @name, as long as it’s striking. If you are setting up an account for a service do check the Social Media- Guidelines on the use of University logos with the corporate marketing team. Make sure the image is clear enough, as it appear as a small icon. Don’t leave your profile picture as the default Twitter ‘egg’ – this suggests that you are either very new to Twitter or a spammer! You can also add a ‘Header’ image which customises your profile page a little more.
2. Add your real name, if you wish. This will appear on your profile, so if you use an abstract pseudonym and picture (like Helen Webster, for example, who calls herself @scholastic_rat), your Twitter account can still be identifiably ‘you’ – again, useful at conferences! If you use Twitter to represent a department or group, then the ‘full’ version of its title, especially if your @name is an acronym, would be something to add here.
3. Add a location (this could also be an institution or other affiliation). Your followers might be from anywhere in the country or the world, so this gives people a bit more context about which university or HE body you are affiliated with, lending you credibility and authority.
4. Add a URL to a personal website or webpage. You can have only one, so perhaps your university webpage, if you have one, would be most appropriate here. People can then find out more about you than is possible in your Twitter profile.
5. Add a ‘bio’. You have 160 characters to sum up who you are and what you might be tweeting about, to encourage people and give them a reason to follow you. Again, a blank or minimal bio isn’t very inviting, and suggests that you are too new to be interesting, that there is little to be gained from following you, or you are a spam account. A well-thought out bio is an important part of gaining new followers. Have a look at the bios on other tweeters’ profiles, and see what you find inviting or off-putting. Some people like to add that they are “tweeting in a personal capacity” or that the “views are my own” to clarify that their tweets do not reflect the views of their employer, although you may feel that this is clear enough anyway.
6. You can connect your Twitter account to post automatically to your Facebook account too, if you have one. Think carefully about the two audiences for Facebook and Twitter – is this something you want to do? Or would you rather keep them separate?

Editing your Profile and other Settings

You can change all the information you entered while registering by clicking on the Edit Profile button:

In addition, you can change your Header photo – the one the top that sits behind your avatar – or change the ‘theme color’. Click the ‘Save Changes’ button when you’re happy with the results.

To change other settings, click on your small Profile Picture at the top of the screen, and select Settings. By default you will receive notifications of various Twitter activities by email, which can be a bit annoying. Under ‘Email notifications’ you may deactivate all notifications for the moment and come back later to refine your email preferences to be notified about specific activities.

Visit the twitter help pages on how to manage your account for more information.

More to explore

You can create more Twitter accounts from other email addresses for other aspects of your life, and it’s best not to mix content and audiences too much – for example, if you use Twitter for a hobby, then a separate account for professional purposes means that you aren’t filling people’s Twitter feeds with things that don’t interest them or confuse them. It’s fine to add a personal touch to your professional tweets though!

Activity for Day 1:
That’s enough for now, take you time until Monday October 24, 2016 to create an engaging profile, which invites others to follow your tweets. Be aware that you still can change settings later on.

Let us know how you’re getting on, why not leave a comment on this post a link to the URL of your profile? Look at the web address in your browser web address bar, this is your twitter url. Or if you have any other comments or questions, let us know by leaving a comment! If you’re finding it hard to get in touch through the blog, do email me at HSLU.

Best wishes
@cinigabellini

Ten Days of Twitter for Learning Developers at HSLU starts on Monday 24th October 2016, and I’m really looking forward to meeting you online, exploring Twitter and joining in the conversations. I’ve found it an invaluable way to share information and resources with others. I hope you find it a positive experience too.

We’ll be going at a manageable pace – one small aspect of Twitter each day  – each day will need about 30 minutes for you to cover the basics. If you get a day or so behind, don’t worry though, it’s easy to catch up when you have time, the blog posts will all still be there, and I will still be around on Twitter to say hi! If you have time, there are some extras to explore, also spend a little time each day engaging with your Twitter feed and interacting with your new followers – it will be worth investing a little extra time if you’re able to!

Prepare for Day 1: Set up a profile
In order to participate in this course you will need a Twitter account. Setting up an account on Twitter is the easy part! There’s still a few things to think about, as Twitter is a very public social media channel. Some prefer using a test account first to explore twitter within this course until they get used to, others will start off with a real name using a personal, individual account or wish to set up an impersonal account to publicise a department, service or group. This information is covered more on detail on Day 1, and for your convenience it will be published on Wednesday 19th October 2016, so you will have enough time to get prepared for your account setup.

Where does the course happen?
Follow the Twitter stream at https://twitter.com/HSLU10DoT
Daily Tasks and general course information will be published from @HSLU10Dot course account, conversations through my individual account @cinigabellini

If you have any questions or comments, do leave them in the comment field below. If you’re finding it hard to get in touch through the blog, do email me at HSLU. By the way, you can comment, email or tweet in German, multilingual tweeting is quite common.

See you soon online!
@cinigabellini