Two Very Useful Twitter Tools for Educators
I have been using two particularly useful Twitter services for a little while now and I thought I would share them with you. Each of these services addresses a unique problem that I was having while using Twitter and makes the experience much better.
The first of these is ReadTwit. ReadTwit is a service that turns your Twitter stream into links and sends them to your RSS fead reader. This is useful because it saves your feed even when you are *gasp* not actually on Twitter. This gives me the ability to go through the feed later at my own pace and bookmark the best stuff. The other great thing that this service does is drill into the shortened link and give you a preview of its destination.
The second very useful tool for educators is called Topify, and it helps with sorting through the frequent follower updates that you get (particularly on #followfriday, or #teachertuesday). Topify sends you a very detailed email message for nearly every action that is performed on your Twitter account, including when you are followed, follow or block someone, or receive a direct message. The most useful thing about these email messages is the detailed information that they provide about the user allowing you to make a better decision about adding them to your PLN.
The emails also allow you to take action from within without having to browse to Twitter itself. You can follow, block or even report spammers from right inside the email. Handy! Topify is technically in an invite only beta stage, but I asked for and received one within a few hours. I cannot reccommend these two Twitter tools enough, give them a try.
October 20, 2009