10 Days of Twitter

Welcome

Welcome to Ten Days of Twitter, or as it’s called in twitterspeak, #YSJ10DoT !

Ever wondered if Twitter might be a useful tool for enhancing your teaching & learning, or developing your personal learning network? Not sure how to get started, or how it all works?

YSJ10DoT will help you to learn to use Twitter from scratch, build up your network and join in the conversation in 10 days!

YSJ10DoT will take place from Monday 25 March – Friday 5 April.

Twitter is in many ways very simple to use - it’s just a micro-blogging social media platform on which you can post 280 character ‘tweets’ which your followers can see, and you can follow other people to see what they’re sharing. Sounds easy, and in fact, setting up an account, following people and sending tweets is easy.

And yet… for such a simple platform, Twitter is pretty complex. It’s not the functionality, so much as the conventions (@, #, RT, etc), the strategies for tweeting effectively and building a network, the plethora of ‘apps’ or third party tools to add on… Not to mention thinking about why you might want to use such a platform, and what you might use it to achieve, other than sharing celebrity gossip and what you had for breakfast.

At first people are often very sceptical – what could you possibly say that was of any academic or professional value in 280 characters? And why would anyone care to know what you are saying? How could Twitter possibly enhance your work in any way, other than a fun way to distract yourself from real work? To find out, view the schedule opposite and register to participate in the next YSJ10DoT, which is taking place from Monday 25 March - Friday 5 April 2019. 

Over the ten days, we’ll be exploring Twitter together. During each of the Ten Days of Twitter, We’ll be sharing a daily post on a small aspect of Twitter, to get you up and running and exploring what Twitter might offer you.  Throughout, we’ll be focusing very practically and specifically on what Twitter can offer you. None of these activities will take up 

very much of your time, so we hope it will be a worthwhile experiment for you! We’ll be interacting with each other too on Twitter, so you’ll be building up your network on Twitter very quickly! There are quite a few academics, faculties, programmes etc. on Twitter already, using Twitter to ask questions, find resources, collaborate on projects etc. – join us!

One important thing to remember: whenever you tweet about the programme, use the hashtag #YSJ10DoT so that we can find each other initially. We’ll explain more later!

#YSJ10DoT got me back on Twitter, thanks! I haven’t used twitter for teaching as until now I thought it would mean getting students to follow me/following students. Now I realise - it doesn’t have to be this way! (Stefanie Allum)

#YSJ10DoT Open Badges 2019

To encourage full engagement, and to allow participants to evidence their Twitter skills, the TEL team will award open badges for various (optional!) tasks over the course of the ten days.

This year, we are awarding two open badges. The #YSJ10DoT 2019 Hatched badge at the end of day 5 and the #YSJ10DoT 2019 Flying badge at the end of day 10.

After we've verified that you've met the criteria, we will issue your badge.

To earn the #YSJ10DoT 2019 Hatched badge, participants will have:

• - set up their profile (incl bio & photo)
• - sent at least five tweets, one of which must be: Joining in #YSJ10DoT with @YSJTEL
• - followed at least 10 people
• - sent at least 2 @mentions or @replies
• - sent a tweet including media (e.g. an image, gif, poll, hyperlink)

To earn the #YSJ10DoT 2019 Flying badge, participants will have:

• - set up their profile (incl bio & photo)
• - sent at least five tweets, one of which must be: Joining in #YSJ10DoT with @YSJTEL
• - followed at least 10 people
• - sent at least 2 @mentions or @replies
• - sent a tweet including media (e.g. an image, gif, poll, hyperlink)
• - sent at least 3 retweets including at least 1 ‘quoted Tweet’
• - used a hashtag to contribute to a conversation
• - create a public Twitter list

Prize (YSJ Staff only)

At the end of the two weeks, YSJ colleagues who earn both open badges will be entered into a prize draw to win Social Media for Academics by Mark Carrigan.

Tweet up (YSJ Staff only)

Friday 5 April 2019 12:00 - 13:30

Our 2019 10 Days of Twitter programme finishes on 5 April with a ‘Tweet-up’ where academics from York St John and the University of York will share their experiences of how to use Twitter to enhance teaching and learning. 

Speakers

12:15 Dr Glenn Hurst, University of York

Shortlisted in ‘The Most Innovative Teacher of the Year’ award category by Times Higher Education (THE) 2018 and JISC Higher Education Social Media Superstar, Glenn lectures in the Department of Chemistry at the University of York. As well as using Twitter to engage with students and the academic community, Dr Glenn Hurst uses social media to enhance the quality of his teaching - by empowering students to create their own YouTube videos of organic chemistry mechanisms.

12:45 Rob Avery, York St John University

Senior Lecturer in the School of Health Sciences, Rob contributes to both Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy programmes at York St John. He is an advocate of digital learning and is involved in developing online resources for students within the School of Health Sciences. He is currently researching the creation of positive learning spaces in the physical and digital environments.

13:00 Kerry Edwards, York St John University

Kerry is a Senior Lecturer in Occupational Therapy at York St John. She has developed a strong interest in Social Media and manages the programme's Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as the programme's blog. She is interested in how social media can be effectively used to enhance student engagement with their learning and experience on their programme of study.

13:15 Dr Sarah Crabbe, York St John University

Sarah is a Senior Lecturer at York Business School and teachers on the Undergraduate Business Information Technologist and Manager routes. She has carried out research into creating a framework to enable support for people who suffer from Computer Anxiety. Sarah uses Twitter to collect ideas and engage with staff from a global network to develop her own teaching.

Lunch will be provided. Spaces are limited.

To register for the Tweet up event, book your place here.

We hope you’ll join us for Ten Days of Twitter – give it a chance, give it time for your network to build and get to know you, explore what it can do for you and make up your own min

TEL team (@YSJTEL)