Step by Step Guide To Managing A Classroom Twitter Account With GroupTweet

Interested in using Twitter in the classroom, but not sure where to start? No problem, after reading this step by step guide your classroom will be up and running on Twitter in no time!

GroupTweet is the best way to use Twitter in the classroom as it allows any number of students and teachers to all Tweet from a single class Twitter account (without sharing the password). Your class Twitter account can be private or public and GroupTweet offers built in moderation functionality allowing you to easily approve student’s Tweets before they are published.

A GroupTweet powered classroom Twitter account is much more powerful than simply using a class hashtag since all of your class Tweets (from any number of students and teachers) can now be published from a permanent Twitter account. No need for students to constantly run hashtag searches or follow a bunch of other students Tweets. They simply follow the GroupTweet enabled class account and the rest is simple.

With GroupTweet, students don’t need their own personal Twitter accounts. They can simply login to your class’s GroupTweet dashboard with any email address to send Tweets from the classroom account.  Of course, if students have their own personal Twitter accounts they can also use those and Tweet using any Twitter app each of them prefers.

Now – lets get started with the step by step guide!

Step 1: Create a Twitter Account Specifically For Your Class (if you don’t have one already)

You might already have a Twitter account created for your class – if so, go ahead and skip to step #2!

If not, you will need to visit Twitter.com to create one. If you are already logged in to Twitter.com with your personal account you will need to logout and then click the “sign up” link on Twitter.com.  When you sign up, Twitter might tell you your email address is already taken. If you have a Gmail account, then you can use this trick found on our blog.

Step 2: Connect Your Class Twitter Account With GroupTweet

Visit GroupTweet.com/edu and click on the green button stating, “Connect Your School or Class Twitter Account To Get Started For Free.”

On the next page, click the blue “Connect with Twitter” button.

Connect

This launches a Twitter Authorization window (seen below). On this step you want to make sure to authorize GroupTweet to work with your class’s Twitter account (not your personal account). You might have to logout of your personal account first and then sign into the class account. The logo in the top right tells you which of your accounts you are authorizing with GroupTweet.

Auth

Step #3: The Setup Wizard

After authorizing GroupTweet you will be taken through a short setup wizard as you see below:

step2

Go ahead and add your email address and click the “Continue” button. Since you are reading this blog post, on the next step of the wizard you can go ahead and click the “Skip Guided setup” link under the continue button to proceed to the GroupTweet dashboard.

Step #4: Invite Students

Now you see your class’s GroupTweet dashboard (as pictured below). Your students can visit this page to send and read Tweets from your class account.

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To invite students you can simply copy the URL link of your dashboard page and send to your students (it contains your secret code) or you can click on the blue “Invite Contributors” button on the left side of the dashboard.

After clicking the invite contributors button you are taken to the page below. You can simply copy your invite link to your clipboard and send in your own email. Or you can enter student’s emails in the invite form, and we will send the email for you.

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Step #5: Add Yourself as an Admin Contributor

Go ahead and click the contributors link in the left hand side of the GroupTweet settings, or the blue “Add Contributors” button from the GroupTweet dashboard. You are then taken to the Contributors menu of GroupTweet settings as you can see below. We recommend you add your personal Twitter username as an “admin contributor”.  You can see I’ve added “@craft_ryan” and changed the “User Level” from “Contributor” to “Admin”. This means that I can then login to GroupTweet.com with my personal Twitter account to manage the settings of this account and any other account I’m an admin of.

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Step #6: Turn Message Moderation On or Off

If you want to make sure you can review and approve student’s Tweets before they are published from the school or class account, you will want to enable message moderation from the GroupTweet settings. Just visit the message moderation tab, and then in the drop-down under “Moderate Messages” select “All Messages”.  This means that all Tweets from approved contributors will automatically enter the moderation queue.

You will also want to add your email address under the moderation settings. This will allow you to receive an email notification each time a student Tweet is awaiting approval. You can approve or deny straight from your email inbox on the go. No need to login or out of the dashboard.

Step #7: Configure Tweeting Methods

Once your students join as contributors they can Tweet from the class account in two different ways: 1) They can login to your dashboard with any email address after you send them the invite link or 2) Students can send Tweets directly from their own personal Twitter accounts using any Twitter app each of them prefers (Twitter.com, Twitter for iPhone, Android, etc).  Student’s without personal Twitter accounts will have to use your classroom’s GroupTweet dashboard.  Students can even create a shortcut on their phone home screen so it works like a regular app.

GroupTweeting “Remotely” without Visiting the Dashboard

Students can Tweet from your classroom account directly from their own personal Twitter accounts.  No need to even login to the dashboard.  Students love it, because it requires little to no change in behavior. Students can use whichever Twitter application each of them prefers whether that is Twitter for iPhone, Android, Twitter.com, or Tweetbot.

In the screenshot below, you can see there are three Remote GroupTweeting Options available. You can enable any, all, or none of these options.

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Remote GroupTweeting Method #1: Via @Mentions

In the case of the @gtDemoClass account, contributors simply include @gtDemoClass at the beginning or end of their Tweets. In the screenshot below, you can see a student simply sends a Tweet to @gtDemoClass:

@mention300

Then the student’s Tweet is instantly Tweeted from the class account for all the rest of the students to see. You can see below that GroupTweet automatically appends the contributors username at the end of the Tweet. The contributor “signature” is completely customizable:

Remote GroupTweeting Method #2: Via Hashtag

Hashtag GroupTweeting is great, because you can choose any hashtag(s) you want for your classroom. Using a GroupTweet account is a much better experience for your students than simply using a Twitter hashtag for your class. With a GroupTweet account, the students only need to follow the class Twitter account. They don’t need to consistently monitor hashtag searches or follow every other student in the class. They simply follow the class account and they will see all the relevant Tweets sent out from that account. In the example below, the student includes the hashtag #myclass in their Tweet since this was designated as the hashtag trigger for the @gtDemoClass account.

hashtag300

Just like that, the message is also instantly Tweeted from the Classroom account:

Remote GroupTweeting Method #3: Via Direct Message

The Direct Message (“DM”) method is great for students who want to make sure their classroom related Tweets only get sent from the classroom account and not also their personal Twitter accounts. In the example below, @Craft_Ryan wants to Tweet from the @gtDemoClass account, but wants the Tweet to only go out to the followers of @gtDemoClass  and not also to all his followers. So @craft_ryan simply sends a Twitter Direct Message to @gtDemoClass . Whatever is sent in the DM will then get converted by GroupTweet into a Tweet from the Team account. Check out the example below:

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The resulting GroupTweet is seen below:

That Sums Up the GroupTweet Basics

These simple steps will make you a groupTweet pro in no time. GroupTweet is a very flexible and powerful platform that can be used in a number of different ways (such as entirely via Text Message if desired), so if you have any questions just leave us a comment or email us!

Have multiple classes?

Do you have multiple classes and want to keep each class’s Twitter discussion and feed separate from each other? If that’s the case, you will need to create a separate Twitter account for each of your classes and follow the steps listed above for each account. When first setting up your GroupTweet accounts, you will have to connect each one separately. However, if you make sure to add yourself as an admin contributor to each of your class accounts (step #5 above), you will then be able to easily switch between your various class accounts with a single login.

If you haven’t already connected your classroom’s Twitter account with GroupTweet, what are you waiting for?  Go ahead and navigate over to GroupTweet and get started!

Hi, I'm , Co-Founder of GroupTweet.com. GroupTweet allows you to add multiple contributors to a single Twitter account - creating a seamless group Twitter experience. Want to learn more? Click here for some examples or reach out via Twitter, you can find me @craft_ryan