If you are not familiar with the basics of twitter, watch the video below:




Most importantly, Twitter is a great tool for building parent involvement. Here are some sample posts or tweets from parent groups:

PTO Meeting this Thursday. XHS Princpals will be on hand to talk about the upcoming transition for the 8th graders. Don't miss it!

Thanks to all who have volunteered for Friday's Holiday Shoppe. We still need more volunteers - if you can help, DM me.

Working on our school auction. Anyone have an ideas for a fun theme?

Some Twitter lingo and basics:

Follow- When you follow someone on Twitter, that means you elect to see, in your twitter stream,  the tweets that they post.

Tweets - this is just another word for post or status.

Your “followers”-  (a.k.a. “tweeps,” or “tweeple”) are the people who have chosen to see your tweets.

@ Replies - When you want to reply to someone or simply get their attention, you use the @ sign followed by their username and your message. Note that when you do this, everyone who follows you and that person sees your message.

Direct messages -  To send a private message you type a 'd' before their user name and then the message. Direct messages  are often referred to as “DM.”  You cannot, however, DM just any Twitter user - only people who you follow and happen to be following you back. This restriction helps prevent spamming.

Adding links to your Tweets:  You can include links in your tweet simply by posting the complete URL, including “http://”, but some URLs are long. Luckily there are free online services that will shorten your URLs. Three popular services are Hootsuite, snurl,  and bit.ly. They all work basically the same way: You enter the long URL, and the service generates a shortened URL. You then copy and paste the short URL into your tweet.

Still not convinced you should jump on the Twitter bandwagon? Watch this Youtube video about the social media revolution.

Now that you're convinced, we hope you'll follow us on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/ptotoday
http://twitter.com/TimPTO
We'd also love you to join the conversation on our Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/PTOToday
Does your school use Twitter? We'd love to hear how you are using it and how you have encouraged parents to engage with this new form of communication.