A brief introduction to using Twitter to support professional development and teaching from the perspective of a chemistry lecturer.

1. Twitter & HE
Dr Simon J. Lancaster
Tweet including #BIOLT13

2. @S_J_Lancaster:
Tweeting
 “Twitter is a website, owned and operated by
Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and
microblogging service, enabling its users to send
and read messages called tweets. Tweets are
text-based posts of up to 140 characters
displayed on the user's profile page.” Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter,
accessed 1/5/2011.
 Reasons to Tweet:
1. To keep in touch with the subject / education
community.
2. To facilitate your life.
3. To provide a novel and very immediate means of
communication with students over a particular
topic or module.

3. @CHE2C32:
Supporting a Module
 Example tweets from @CHE2C32 :
 Please remember to put #CHE2C32 in your tweet
if you want it to feature in the lecture. @CHE2C32
just addresses it to me its not the search term.
 "Super-toxic" dimethylmercury is this week's
Chemistry in its element #podcast subject.
Careful now! http://bit.ly/cHswSp
 Example tweets from followers (students):
 @CHE2C32 made some great black shiny crystals
today :D
 @CHE2C32 Tutorial work and dolly mixtures -
happy times :)
 @CHE2C32 is in the house and my experiment
chooses this time to start going wrong. Thank
you God.

4. Science and Education
@NatureChemistry Nature Chemistry
“RT @CHE2C32: Just writing a short talk for #VCE2011 on using
Twitter in Chemistry. Any comments gratefully received.”
@TwitterBulletin News, Status & T
“Twitter as a Teaching & Learning Tool http://bit.ly/nu6CMN“
@ChemConnector ChemConnector
“John Cleese does chemistry : sciencebase.com/science-blog/j…”
@ACSpressroom Michael Woods
“Scientists find crystals that may have formed in the primordial
cloud that produced the sun and planets bit.ly/rqAZOk”
@GradeGuru GradeGuru
“Will a Harvard Professor's New Technology Make College
Lectures a Thing of the Past? http://ow.ly/5Uhdj @good #highered
#edtech”

5. Twitter Polling

6. Widgets

7. Tweetbeam
There are many (web) apps designed to project a
real-time Twitter-feed.

8. Twitwheel
Twitwheel is a highly visual way to see who is part of
a discussion.

9. Storify
How do we combat the transient nature of the Twitter
feed and make a lasting record?

10. Achieve a critical mass
• Follow the tweeps in this list:
https://twitter.com/S_J_Lancaster/education
• Use an avatar (to replace the egg).
• Retweet freely.
• Glossary
Tweep – someone who tweets
tweetup – physical meeting of tweeters
RT – retweet
MT – modified tweet
#ff – follow Friday

11. Conclusions
• Twitter is incredibly powerful.
• More information then we could ever process.
• The potential for exponential dissemination.
• Twitter is a public forum and should be treated as
such.
• Using it as non-compulsory addition to modules
requires considerable perseverance and creativity.
• For an academic its strongest suites are personal
and professional development and networking.
• Twitter incorporation does not need to be exclusive.
• Tools exist to present and archive tweets.