Use Tweetdeck to Pre-Tweet your day

Twitter is starting to spread rapidly through our district this year. Yes! More and more classrooms are taking to Twitter to share what they are accomplishing each day. We have one school, Parkade Elementary, with every classroom signed up with their "Follow Me" campaign. It's a great initiative. As a parent, wouldn't you love to be able to get a wider glimpse inside your child's classroom?

One obstacle to getting your tweets out during the day is a fundamental one. You're teaching. It's tough to set aside tweeting time, especially with how quickly things change during the day. So why not get all your next day's tweeting done the night before? It's not as crazy as you'd think. Tweetdeck is the answer.

Tweetdeck is a web application or a program to download to your computer. You must create a Tweetdeck account. I'd suggest using your same Twitter credentials if you can. Then you can add your existing Twitter account once you are logged in. A couple of features make Tweetdeck a handy tool. First, you can set up different columns of information to match your needs. Set up a column to follow a particular user, hashtag, or keep track of your mentions. It's just another way of managing your tweeting world. 

But my favorite part of Tweetdeck is the tweet scheduler. Press the familiar blue button to compose your tweet. Include all your regular content (text, images, links). Then instead of tweeting right now, press the little clock icon in the bottom left side of the composer box. Then choose the exact day and time you want your tweet to be sent. Press "tweet". Your scheduled tweet then moves to the far right column in Tweetdeck while it waits for the designated time to arrive. If things get crazy and your schedule changes, you can delete the tweet before it goes out.

As a classroom teacher, I would pre-tweet three or four activities, objectives, or events for the next day and set them to send during the activity. That way parents can get a real-time look at what's going on. It's so much better than rattling off a rash of tweets right after dismissal each day. And if someone challenges you about tweeting during instructional time, you can educated them about the power of Tweetdeck. You know, a learning opportunity.