I do TWEET!

This time last year I was not a fan of twitter...

It seemed like ONE MORE THING that I was supposed to be doing but who has time?

Then I attended an NATA (Nebraska Art Teachers Association) conference hosted by Timothy Bogatz (check him out here and here).  He was talking about using twitter in his classroom and it seemed really interesting.  Then he told us about tweetdeck... and I was SOLD!

My biggest hangup about twitter was getting trapped in a time suck.  You know, like when you go to facebook or Target to look for one quick thing and find yourself still there an hour later... and you still don't have the one thing you went there for. Tweetdeck allows me to organize all my twitter information in an orderly manner.

From one screen I can compose and send tweets, I can scroll through my home feed (everyone I follow), I can see any interactions with my account (who is following me, who favorited or retweeted my tweets, etc), I can create searches and follow relevant #hashtags, I can search for a specific person or #hashtag... and so much more.  This website is the reason I felt comfortable jumping into tweeting!

No I have two main reasons for LOVING twitter.

1. I can easily interact with other teachers, even those I don't follow.  If you tweet out a topic or search for a #hashtag you can be connected with other "experts" in less than 24 hours, sometimes minutes.  You can also search by hashtags for topics that you want to know more about.  
2. I can QUICKLY share what we are doing in the artroom.  I don't always have time to write an entire blog post about one fun thing but I can quickly tweet it out.  Just this week I have tweeted about a students "What it means to be an artist" card and a naughty lady who painted on her hand.  

* bonus reason to love twitter is to search for the emmys/oscars/etc and read the hilarious tweets that roll through while these events are happening.  

Funny thing is that now there are even times I get a "twitter high"  Like when the Jon Gordon retweeted my tweet about him or when someone like ArtwithMrE likes one of  my tweets.  It's like I really talked with that person and I get all giggly.