Getting Your Tweetdeck Ready for ITEC

We are less than a week away from ITEC, Iowa's biggest educational technology conference.  This is a great time for educators to come together from across the state, and even those from outside the state, to share how they are transforming their learning environments through the use of technology.

Whether you are at the conference or not, you can learn a lot by following all of the great things people are sharing on Twitter.  Besides using Tweetdeck, which is my Twitter tool of choice on a computer, there are some things you can do to make it easier and better as you follow along.  The following tips will get you started and hopefully improve your Twitter experience during the conference.

1.  Create a new column for conference Tweets.

• Click on the magnifying glass icon to conduct a search.  The main hashtag for the conference will be #itecia.  

• After you type it into the search box, you can click on the "Add column" button at the bottom to add this column to your Tweetdeck.

2.  Add in the other hashtags.

• People don't always agree on the same hashtag when at a conference so you can always search for multiple hashtags at the same time.

1. Click on the Settings icon at the top of the column you just created.
2. Click on "Content"
3. In the matching section, type the main hashtag (#itecia), then type OR and follow that with another hashtag that may be in use that day (#itec15).  This will now search for any tweet that contains the main hashtag or the other hashtag and show them all.

3.  Unfortunately as the conference hashtags are used more and more during the conference, spambots will show up and start tweeting out spam containing the hashtag if it is trending.  You can easily remove those tweets if they start showing up.  

• Follow steps 1 and 2 from above but now you will be placing the hashtags the spambot is using, besides the one for the conference, into the Excluding box to remove them.  The spambots usually just combine the top trending hashtags into one tweet to share a link that you don't want to click.
• Make sure to include OR between any hashtags you don't want to pop up in your search.

If you follow these steps you will improve the effectiveness of your Tweetdeck experience while being at the conference, or following from the comfort of your home or classroom.