Wednesday, May 27

What Are Your Favorite Twitter Applications?


THINKING
There are more than a 150 3rd party applications that work with Twitter that could be useful for teaching and learning (at least according to Jane's master list). However, how many of us have the time to explore all, or figure out which one is appropriate and useful for our own learning and teaching.

Though, why not use our collective intelligence to share with our readers our favorite 3rd party twitter applications, and perhaps help a few busy educators out there who are already struggling to figure out how to use Twitter (itself) as an online learning facilitation tool.


MY FAVORITES
Alright, I am pretty new to 3rd party Twitter applications, and I am very much still learning, so don't expect miracles from my current favorites. But the juice will grow as I learn. I mean as 'WE' learn collectively! Here we go:

  • TweetMeme
    Is a service which aggregates all the popular links on twitter to determine which links are popular. Tweetmeme is able to categorize these links into categories and subcategories, making it easy to filter out the noise to find what your interested in.

  • Excellent tool to feed your blog, social bookmarks, etc. to Twitter.

  • TweetDeck
    Is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more. TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organised and up to date.

  • DestroyTwitter
    Is a compact though robust Twitter application built to run on Mac, Windows, and Linux using Adobe AIR. It consists of a series of canvases that constantly update to keep tweets up-to-date using notifications that appear when a new tweet arrives. DestroyTwitter uses a minimal amount of memory compared to its AIR-based alternatives without sacrificing functionality and performance. As a result, it can easily run in the background as an automated process. True, but the application title is a disaster :)

  • Happy Tweets
    Is a measuring stick for how positive, or happy, a particular Tweep is. Enter the Twitter username for you or one of your buddies, click the "get happy" button, and you'll find out how happy your Tweets are. This is surely useful for miserable teachers. They can get it slapped in their face. Though not sure if it is scientific :)

  • StrawPoll
    Tiny polls in 140 characters or less. Ask Your Question, then track With the new StrawPoll Platform, you can use your own Twitter account to ask the questions you find interesting.

  • More coming soon!


YOUR FAVORITES?

What about you? What are your favorite 3rd party Twitter applications for learning and teaching? Let's discover and learn collectively! I am sure a lot of beginners like myself would appreciate if more 'Twitter King Kongs' out there come out and share their juiciest twitter applications lists. It could be a top 10 list, or a top 5 list, or a top 1 list (oops, that is not a list!), or even a top 100 list. And if you could include a line, or two for why and how it is being applied for teaching and learning, now that would simply be awesome (for sure!).

Perhaps you have already shared them on your blog, or in your Twitter world. If you have or planning to, please share them with us in the comments section, or on Twitter, or whatever Google finding tool you are using. If you mention 'ZaidLearn' somewhere in the post, hopefully I will discover it by myself (no need to tell) :)

All findings will be listed here (or the comments section below):

Have fun exploring 3rd party Twitter applications that could potentially rock your learning and teaching world :)

5 comments:

Manish Mohan said...

My favorite Twitter apps:

- TweetDeck. My default twitter client. Love its ability to create groups and visually follow people in groups.
- Mr. Tweet. Great app for discovering new folks to follow based on my connections.
- Follow Cost. I use this a lot to figure out if I should follow someone or not. I avoid very heavy Tweeter users (more than say 15-20 tweets/day) and this is a great app that shows no. of tweets/day.
- Tweet Stats. Interesting to visit it once in a while and see your own stats.

ZaidLearn said...

Awesome! Thanks Manish Mohan :)

Your wisdom and tips will do wonders :)

I am currently exploring Tweet stats.

Warm Regards,

Zaid

Mireille Jansma said...

I use Tweetdeck and since a month or so Friendfeed. Plus there are some other apps I use for a while and then tend forget, nice (sometimes very nice!!) as they are. I would have to go through my links at Diigo to make a list...

However what I wanted to tell you is that Online College Degree had published a marvellous list with twitter resources for educators: 100 Tips, Apps, and Resources for Teachers on Twitter. Perhaps you know it? If not, you can find it here: http://onlinecollegedegree.org/2009/03/19/100-tips-apps-and-resources-for-teachers-on-twitter/

They have categorized their many links under the following headers:
* Resources for Learning Twitter
* Twitter for Educators
* Resources for Making the Most of Twitter
* Suggestions for Twitter Use in the Classroom
* Apps and Twitterers to Use with Students
* Apps to Make Twitter Work for the Educator
* App Resources
* Tweets to Follow
* Fun Twitter Experiments

Kind regards,

Mireille

ZaidLearn said...

Awesome II! Thanks for sharing this amazing resource, Mireille Jansma.

Highly appreciated!

Warm Regards,

Zaid

lms training said...

All the twitter application are my favorite one . . . .