Introduction
#eltchat is the hashtag used on Twitter for talking to other ELT teachers.
There’s an official #ELTChat Twitter account which you can follow (and you should) to see part of the conversation and keep on top of the blog, but to be able to see all of discussion going on you need to follow the hashtag.
Unfortunately you can’t do that in real time in Twitter, instead you have to use a third party app to help you track it.
This is a guide for how to set-up a third party app to follow #ELTChat.
If I’ve missed anything or it’s still not clear, post a message in the comments below and we’ll work out how to improve my guide.
1. Follow Twitter in your browser
If you just want to watch the #ELTChat and not take part then you can follow it on TWUBS here. But if you want to take part you’ll need to get a Twitter account.
You can follow #ELTchat like this
- Log into your twitter account
- Type #eltchat into the search box
- Save this search
- Click on ‘Latest’ tweets
- Follow the discussion and all the tweets that contain the hashtag
- Type #ELTchat every time you want to communicate with people who follow this hashtag.
Put #ELTchat in the search box
Click on ‘latest’ and follow the conversation!
2. Pick your app
We’ll be covering the two most popular ones here:
- Tweetdeck – for which you do need a twitter account to follow and/or participate in an #ELTchat.
- Twubs – for which you do not need to be registered on twitter to follow an #ELTchat
3.a. Tweetdeck – Signing Up
The sign up for Tweetdeck is on the homepage, so head to it here and you should be able to sign up using your Twitter handle.
Once you’ve signed up it’ll ask who uses your account, select “Only You” (it gives the option for more than one, because companies will often use these sort of apps.).
Click “Get Started” and you’ll be greeted with a home screen.
3.b. Tweetdeck – How does it work?
Rather than seeing all your Twitter information in a single big feed, Tweetdeck also allows you to split off chunks.
Unlike Hootsuite it comes pre-populated with some basic columns. Clicking the plus on the left sidebar will allow you to create more and clicking the blue quill at the top will allow you to write a tweet.
We want to follow the hashtag #eltchat so we’re going to click the plus:
And then select search. The window will close and search sidebar will open and we’ll type in “#eltchat”
It’s showing us the Twitter user #ELTChat, but we want to watch the hashtag not a single user so either press enter (Without hovering over the user) or click the search icon. A column should open up. We then click the Add Column button at the bottom:
Success, we should now have a new column with #eltchat at the top. If you can’t see it immediately you might need to scroll to the right.
