From MUSE: Twitter and Professional Development

I am starting to experiment more with Twitter.  Perhaps I am just 800 years old, but for some reason it just always confused me.  How am I supposed to keep up with it? Do I just go to the site all the time? Can't it just be a part of my Google Reader along with everything else? There are so many things to read!! I just discovered Tweetdeck.com,which is helpful--you can organize tweets into columns that you define. And, I'm starting to look into using both Twitter and Tweetdeck as professional development tools.  I can follow specific peeps that I like (Jim Burke, what!).  And, miracle of miracles, I'm starting to get hashtag chats.  I know, I know, welcome to the future, Vanessa.  But, it was HARD. Anyway, #Edchat is something that everyone seems to love and recommend, so it's one of the things I'm starting with.  Now, if I can just remember to actually log in sometimes, I'll be golden. There are about 70 education chats working for specific focuses. There are several hundred hashtags used to identify education-specific tweets. #Edchat continues at noon and 7 p.m. Eastern each Tuesday with different topics. The topics are determined by a poll including five topics that is posted each Sunday and remains open until Tuesday. The No. 1 choice becomes the 7 p.m. topic, and the noon #Edchat covers the second-place topic. A team moderates each #Edchat to keep things moving and focused. "How #Edchat connects educators" from Smartblogs.com Also posted on MUSE '13.