Twitter, if you’ve not already encountered it, is a service worth knowing about. It’s like really simple blogging, but, with each post limited to 140 characters, is used more for conversational updates. Here’s how Wikipedia describes it:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific.

It’s used by a wide range of people and organisations, from 10 Downing Street to Stephen Fry to quite a few of the online education community. How might schools use it? Here are some possibilities:

• Use text message Twitter updates to post on-the-spot updates from school trips or visits
• Display the Twitter updates in the sidebar of the school or class blog
• Follow a topical Twitterer - such as Barack Obama - to get news stories faster than radio or TV

Now you can display your latest Twitter updates (or anyone else’s) using a widget on your edubuzz WordPress blog using Rick’s Twitter for WordPress plugin.  Just activate the plugin and configure your Twitter widget(s).