10 Great Twitter Tools and Extensions for Teachers

January 5, 2015
As a microblogging and social networking platform, Twitter provides endless possibilities for teachers' professional development. From attending world EdTech conferences through the use of hashtags to creating PLNs to fall back on when looking for help or crowdsourcing resources for a particular research project, Twitter-literacy is absolutely an important literacy for the 21st century connected educator. We have written a lot on the importance of Twitter in education and have also reviewed several tools and apps to use for this purpose. In today's post we are sharing with you some of the best Twitter tools and extensions we have reviewed in 2015. If you haven't had a chance to see them before check them out below. Enjoy.

I- Twitter Chrome Extensions for Teachers

1-Silver Bird

Silver Bird is a Chrome extension that offers a number of interesting features for Twitter users. These include:keeping track of trending topics on Twitter, creating custom search queries, viewing all your tweets in a unified timeline, supports real time timeline updates, follow/unfollow users and many more.

2- Notifier for Twitter

As its name indicate, Notifier for Twitter is a Chrome extension that brings the power of Twitter right into your browser. Using Twitter’s streaming API, Notifier for Twitter keeps you updated with the recent tweets including DMs and replies which all appear instantly on your desktop. It also ‘ features a full timeline view available at all times from the browser toolbar, allowing you to read and compose tweets and DMs, as well as retweet, favourite and reply to tweets.’

3- TweetDeck by Twitter

This is definitely one of your favourite Twitter apps. It provides some really great features that include creating columns and lists, creating collections of your favourite tweets to share with others, scheduling tweets with images, ‘ join Twitter conversation by tweeting, sharing photos and links to news stories, and more.’

II-Twitter Add-ons to use on Your Google Drive

1- Twitter Archiver 

Twitter Archiver is a good add-on that allows you to archive tweets related to a specific search query or a keyword. Twitter Archiver aggregates all related tweets in a Google Sheet that is automatically updated. 'You can write simple queries, use boolean search or include advanced Twitter search operators to create more complex queries.Twitter Archiver can be used for saving tweets around trending hashtags, conference tweets, your brand mentions, geo-tagged tweets, and more. It polls twitter every hour and pulls all the matching tweets into he Google Spreadsheet.’

2- Twitter Curator

Twitter Curator is another excellent add-on to use on your Google Docs. It allows you to conduct quick Twitter searches and save tweets right inside your Google document. This is especially helpful for students working on a research paper requiring citation from Twitter. ‘To get started, sign-in with your existing Twitter account and allow the app to connect to your Twitter account. It uses the API to only fetch tweets around your search queries but it will never post tweets to your Twitter account. Next enter your search query and it will show the most recent tweets around that topic. Click a tweet to add it to the Google Document. You can search for hash tags, @mentions and all the other Twitter search operators.’

III- Web-based Tools to Enhance Your Twitter Experience

1- Twilert

This is a tool similar to Google Alert. It provides you with real-time alerts through email  when tweets containing the hashtags or keywords you specified are mentioned.

2- Hashtagify

This is an advanced hashtag search engine that allows you to type in the name of a hashtag and search for relevant tags, conversations and influencers related to that hashtag.

3- Nuzzel

Nuzzel provides you with an easy clutter-free platform where you can keep updated about what your friends are sharing on both Twitter and Facebook.

4- Trends24

Trends24 allows you to keep track of the trending topics and tweets in the country you specify. You can select any country you want and Trends24 will provide you with a break-down of the trending tweets in it by minutes, hours and days.

5- Twchat

Twchat allows you to “create realtime chat rooms based on twitter hashtag. Invite users and perform the presentations online without any additional software! Add your friends or colleagues to help you with moderation.All you need is to sign in with twitter.”

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