Twitter is a free online service where each user has his or her own webpage that they update as often as they want 140 characters or less at a time. Users update their pages with news, conversation, resources, questions, quotes, humor, and sometimes useless information. People often call these short posts updates or tweets. Many educators use Twitter to connect, collaborate, ask questions, and build a sense of community. This is called microblogging because it's like having a blog where the posts are very short. Here are some recent tweets I saw when I logged into my Twitter.com account:

While Twitter asks the question "What are you doing?" you can see that people share much more than simply what they are up to at the moment.

To post a tweet, simply type it into the box at the top of Twitter.com and click the Update button. Remember, you must be logged in to post an update and the update cannot be longer than 140 characters. You'll notice that Twitter gives you a count of how many of the 140 characters you have remaining to use.

In the dictionary twitter is a noun and means "a succession of chirps as uttered by birds." And really, that's what Twitter is--a series of tweets from whom you choose. That's right! You get to choose whose tweets will show up when you sign into Twitter.

After signing up for Twitter, you can add people so that their updates are displayed on the timeline you see when you log into the site. You're said to be following someone when you add his or her updates to your timeline. The most recent updates (a.k.a. tweets) are listed first. If you follow no one, then your timeline will be blank.

It's easy to add people to your timeline. For example, after you're logged into Twitter visit my Twitter page at twitter.com/tonyvincent. You'll see the Follow button. Clicking the Follow button adds my tweets to that timeline you see each time you visit Twitter.com. Don't worry, you can always return to my page and unfollow my updates.

Keep reading to find out how to find others to follow.

Each Twitter user has a very brief profile that lists the user's name, location, website, and short bio. Users can also add a photo. I suggest completing your profile so that others can decide if they want to follow you. Here's what my profile looks like:

Click Settings in the upper-right corner of Twitter.com and then click the Account tab to complete your profile information.

Clicking a Twitter user's name or photo will take you to their page where you can see their profile information and recent tweets. Although it's not much information, reading a user's profile can help you decide if you want to follow him or her. Besides the profile, you should read through their last several tweets. If those tweets are interesting to you, then you should follow that person.

Coming upon others to follow becomes easier and easier the more you use Twitter. However, finding your first 20 users to follow can be difficult. Here are some places where you can find other educators on Twitter:

Dozens of Twitter users are listed in the Directory of Learning Professionals (& Others) on Twitter.

WeFollow is a site where Twitter users can add themselves to three categories. Jump on over to these categories (called tags) to find educators to follow: teacher, edtech, education, educator, principal, or see the entire list of tags.

Educators on Twitter is a Google Docs spreadsheets where nearly 1,000 educators from around the world have added themselves to the database.

Twitter 4 Teachers is a wiki listing educators in two dozen categories, including National Board Certified Teachers, Science Teachers, Math Teachers, Principals, Elementary Teachers, and Music Teachers.

Who Should I Follow gives suggestions for new Twitter friends. This service works best when you are already following several.

Some Arizona educators on Twitter include pgeorge, scrawford99, jdwilliams, asanchez5, escandonr, npratt, and jagaz. If you're an Arizona educator, please add your Twitter name in the comments!

Twitter users can direct their tweets to other Twitter users either publicly or privately. Public replies begins with the @ symbol and the Twitter username. Below you can see that Digimom is replying to cindybrock. This tweet is out there for public viewing:

If you wanted to tweet a public message directed toward me, you'd begin your message in the Twitter update box with @tonyvincent.

The other kind of reply is a direct message. Direct messages are not public and are only made visible to the person who sent it and the person who received it. Below is a direct message I received from Twitter user kcaise. She did not make this message a public reply because it is a message just for me:

There are two ways to send a private direct message to a Twitter user. One way is to go to a user's Twitter page and click message under Actions on the left side of the page. Another way is to begin your message in the Twitter update box with the letter d followed by the username and message.

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There is one catch when it comes to direct messages. You can only send direct messages to users that are following you. For example, I am following Ellen Degeneres but she is not following me. Therefore, she cannot not receive direct messages from me.

You will often see someone's Twitter update begin with RT and then an @ symbol next to a username. That's called a retweet. The username after the @ symbol is the one who originally posted the message. The person doing the retweeting thought what the original poster wrote was worth repeating. Below is an example of retweeting. First, here's the original tweet:

An hour after I posted the above, Twitter user jamesclay read it and thought it was worth repeating. Here's what his retweet looks like:

I feel that I shared something important or useful when it's retweeted. When you see a tweet that begins with an RT, it's probably something pretty good--something that was worth repeating.

I use Twitter to share links to things I think others will find interesting. Moreover, Twitter has become the place where I find links to great educational (and non educational) websites.

When you type a URL into the update box (including the http://), Twitter makes that URL into a hyperlink after you post it. The problem is that many URLs are quite long and will probably push your tweet over the 140 character limit. Twitter has thought of this and automatically shortens long web addresses using bit.ly. For example, the URL for a recent blog post here at azk12.org is http://www.azk12.org/blog/archives/44-Google-Search-Tricks.html. Twitter uses bit.ly to shrink that 63 character URL and reduce it to this 19 character URL: http://bit.ly/6LwOB.

Here is one of my tweets where I shared a link that was shortened into a bit.ly URL:

When you click on a bit.ly link, your browser is redirected to the longer URL. Bit.ly is similar to TinyURL.com, which I wrote about in a previous post. Besides TinyURL.com and bit.ly, you will see other web addresses shorteners like is.gd, twurl.cc, and tr.im.

You'll find a search box on the right side of your Twitter page, or you can go to search.twitter.com to get real-time search results. That means your search results are current as of when you click the search button.

When I typed in classroom wiki into the Twitter search, 11 tweets were displayed and the oldest one was from six days ago. One of the tweets listed in results actually pointed me to a great listing of podcasts for classroom use!

You can click Advanced Search from the search.twitter.com page to fine-tune your search. Advanced search lets you specify which search terms to include or not to include, the language, dates, and more. Let's say I want to find a math game for my students. I did an Advanced Search looking for tweets that mention multiplication and any of these words: game, site, link, or online. I also indicated I only wanted results that contained web links. The results page listed seven tweets from the last six days. A few of the results mentioned Multiplication Station. In fact, the same update showed up as a retweet twice in the results.

If you find a particularly good tweet in your search results, you should consider clicking on the author's username and checking out their Twitter profile and updates. If you like what you see, click the Follow button to add his or her updates to your timeline.

Twitter.com isn't the only place to check your timeline and to post updates. There are dozens of software applications that take the place of actually going to the Twitter.com website. There are applications for just about every kind of computer and wireless device: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, iPhone, Blackberry, iPod touch, Windows Mobile, etc.

Twitter.com has a listing of popular applications for receiving and sending tweets. An advantage to using software for Twitter is that your timeline is automatically updated every few minutes. When using the Twitter.com site, you have to manually refresh the page to see what's been newly tweeted. Until you get used to using Twitter.com, you may not see a need to use software. That's OK. Don't download software if going to Twitter.com works for you.

In addition to using the website or software, you can receive and send Twitter updates through text messages on your phone. You can activate this feature in your Twitter.com Devices settings. Like Twitter says, there are many options out there--you just have to use the option that makes the most sense for you.

Twitter is different things to different people. People certainly use Twitter for different reasons. Some use Twitter to stay connected with friends and family. Others use it for marketing purposes or communicating with customers. Yet others use it to tell every little silly detail of their lives. Many educators consider Twitter part of what they call their personal learning network (PLN).

After posting a tweet that I was writing this blog post about Twitter for teachers, I received the following reply:

In that tweet Jordan links to his blog post titled 5 Reasons Teachers and Students Should Twitter. The number one reason Jordan lists is collaboration. Other reasons are that Twitter connects users with experts, can be a vehicle for reflection, facilitates instant feedback on ideas, and provides a constant stream of resources.

Twitter is a great learning platform for teachers, but Twitter can also be put to use in the classroom. For example, various fifth graders in Ms. Sumbal's class in Phoenix use Twitter to write short messages, mostly about what they are doing in school at that moment. You can follow them at twitter.com/AZ5thGraders. Similarly, third graders in Memphis post tweets at twitter.com/PDS3D. Buhler High School in Kansas posts updates about extracurricular activities on their page at twitter.com/bhsupdates.

I know that many teachers feel that they have little to say on Twitter. That's OK! You can follow as many people as you like without posting a single tweet yourself. But, I do think that once you see what others are posting, you'll want to join in. Even if you don't think you'll use Twitter right now, I suggest creating a free account today. Twitter is growing so quickly and you'll want to reserve your preferred username before someone else registers it.

Yes, Twitter can be a great way to procrastinate, but it can also a great way to be entertained, enlightened, and educated (or be the person doing the entertaining, enlightening, and educating). Before throwing up your arms and proclaiming that you "don't get it," give Twitter a chance. It might just become one of your favorite websites.