Social Media

Yes, I am a shameless shill for social media. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I am also working on a book to help non-profits gain a foothold in creating a social media community. Here are a few Twitter starter-tips I presented at a non-profit conference to a community of gifted education advocates who were new to social media:

Creating a Community Within Social Media

Social media is simply a term for any internet-based communications platform designed to share knowledge and/or information. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and even the comment section of your local newspaper’s online edition, all function as social media outlets. Typically free, easily accessible and extraordinarily time-consuming, social media networks have created a stable and highly accessible platform for the exchange of ideas and information. And for the gifted community, it’s like ducks taking to water.

The end result is that in a relatively short time many in the G/T community have embraced social media as a way to effectively connect with each other. G/T educators share Moodle application ideas. Parents find links to resources. Advocates rally G/T supporters at the local, state and national levels. People who have fiercely battled alone in the wilderness (well, it seems that way at times) are connecting and building a powerful and vibrant presence on social media platforms.

How to get started on Twitter:

1- Go to http://twitter.com/ and click on the “Sign Up Now” button.

2 – Create your account. You will use your real name for the sign in, but you can create a Twitter Identity in the “Username” space.

3 – Create your account.

4 – You can use the Twitter service to automatically determine which of the people in your G-Mail, Yahoo or AOL mail contact list are currently using Twitter (or you can skip this step if you don’t want Twitter accessing your contact list)

5 – Twitter will automatically give you a list of people to follow. Don’t worry about that – you can always “unfollow” them later if you’d like.

6 – Click on the “Settings” button at the top right of the page. Here is where you will enter a little bio on yourself, select a page design (or use the default) and upload or picture or avatar (or use the default). If you are interested in gifted education you might want to mention that. Understand that when you “follow” someone they will probably look at your bio to decide if they are going to “follow” you back. You can always edit this later if you’d like.

7 – If you click on the “Find People” button at the top right menu bar you can enter a topic (e.g. “gifted” and find people who have “gifted” in their Twitter ID. You can also “follow” the gifted Tweeters mentioned below. Read their profiles and some of their Tweets to find out about them and follow their links to access websites and blogs on gifted.

8 – Answer the question: “What are you doing?” and off you go,…

To help you get started on Twitter, I’d like to recommend the following folks who tweet well and often about all things gifted:
@KimMoldofsky @SwitchedOnMom @davincimom @deepwaterscoach @doublelattemama @DanFearnley @DeborahMersino @TeachAGiftedKid @atxteacher @laughingatchaos @Giftedkidsie @2flippingkids @ginarau @TagMirror @ByrdSeedGifted

And the following experts who don’t Tweet as often as I’d like them too (nudge nudge) but are amazing resources when they do:
@deborahruf @NAGCGIFTED @joelmcintosh @HoagiesGifted @DavidsonGifted @DukeTIP @AnnGift

Enough to get you started. I’d love to create a complete list of folks on Twitter who have joined the G/T community – but this page is definitely a work in progress. I guess what I’m saying is – don’t wait for the book, go see the movie.