Page Objectives

By the time you're finished going through the content and suggested activities found on this page, you should have:

• A basic understanding of how to use hashtags to find information and people relevent to you

Where are the conversations at?

With so many conversations happening on Twitter at once, where do you begin if you want to find specific information? This is where the power of the hashtag comes in. Hashtags are small phrases that are associated with certain conversations, or certain types of information. By putting a "#" in front of a phrase in a tweet or other social media post, you're making that post searchable. Putting a relevant hashtag on a post allows anyone who is looking for information related that topic to have an easier time finding it. I'd recommend that you take a few minutes and read through Mashable's The Beginner's Guide to the Hashtag in order to get a basic understand for how hashtags are structured, and why they are so powerful.

There is literally a hashtag for everything...

As seen in the skit from Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake above, anything can be a hashtag, and there are hashtags out there for just about everything. With all these hashtags being thrown around, how do you find the hashtags that are relevant to you? Probably the best place to start is Teachthought's Complete Guide To Twitter Hashtags For Education. Look through the guide, and pick some categories that you are interested in. Once you've picked out a hashtag that sounds promising, go ahead and type it in to the Twitter search. Spend a few minutes sifting through tweets associated with that hashtag, and consider some of the following questions:

• Is the majority of the information relevant to you?
• Who is using the hashtag?
• How often are new tweets posted with the hashtag?
• Is this a hashtag that you think you'll be interesting in following / participating with, or will you use it just when you need to find resources?

Make note of any hashtags that you find especially useful. If you didn't find what you were looking for, feel free to do your own Google search. Simply type in something along the lines of "your topic education hashtag", and see what comes up. You're bound to come across something you can use.

It's important to note that if you are just interacting with Twitter through their basic site, you do not have the ability to follow hashtags. This is why many people employ a third party tool to track Twitter feeds. There are several options out there, but probably the most popular is Tweetdeck. Although it is possible to follow hashtags using these third party tools, I've found that tracking hashtags can be quite overwhelming, especially if you try to track one that is extremely popular, such as #edchat. Instead, I'd recommend using hashtags to locate people who are saying things that you value, and then following them.

Following the right people

We've looked at how you can find information by actively searching a hashtag, however, Twitter is really about getting information to come to you. What you want to do is craft your Twitter feed so you can hop on for a few minutes each day, and get yourself a few good ideas that will equate to you improving your practice as an education. To do this, you need to follow the right people.

While you are looking through information associated with a hashtag, pay attention to who is posting things that you like or find useful; click on these people, and check out their profile. Looking at their profile will show you information about the person, and also show you their feed. Take a minute to look their other tweets over, and decide if most of their tweets are intelligent and relevant to you. If so, follow that person. You want to make sure that you'll be interested in the majority of things this person tweets, otherwise they will just be cluttering up your feed. If you follow someone, and decide you don't want to see their stuff later, you can just unfollow them; no harm done.

Another option for finding people to follow, is to search for some top educator list with Google. There are lots of these list out there, and if you look at several, you'll probably start seeing the same names pop up over and over again. Here are a couple of list to get you started:

• Education World: Top 15 Educators on Twitter
• Teach.com: Top Educator Influencers on Twitter
• Mashable: 10 Rockstar Teachers on Twitter
• Teachthought: 10 Educators On Twitter You Should Follow (But Probably Don't)

Lastly, but certainly not least; follow the people you know.

The snowball effect

Once you've started following a few of the right people, things kind of naturally progress from there. As you start seeing relevant posts pop up in your Twitter feed, pay attention to what some of the other hashtags are the the people you are following are using. Chances are, you will begin to find other hashtags that are of interest to you. As you discover new hashtags, you'll begin to find more people who have interesting things to say; then, start following those people. You can see how things begin to snowball. Pretty soon you have populated your Twitter feed with tons of great resources and information, and you have begun to build yourself a Personalized Learning Community (PLN). In the following Engage lesson, we'll look at how you can begin interacting with this community in a meaningful way.

Begin your snowball

If you haven't yet, now is the time for you to start your snowball rolling. Use the strategies laid out above to:

• Start following at least 20 educators on Twitter, and like one of their tweets
• Once you're following at least 20 people, tweet something like "Excited to start my #PLN on Twitter!" and tag it with #GetStartedTwitterEdu

Reflect

Take some time to reflect on the learning that took place while progressing through the information and activities offered on this page. Tweet utilizing #GetStartedTwitterEdu:

• One insight or piece of learning you found particularly valuable.
• One question you still have related to the information / activities on this page.