A few weeks a go I wrote a 3 part series on Twitter, and in it I describe about how I completely changed the way I do professional development on Twitter. In a nutshell, I no longer start with signing up and tweeting the first day. I always show how to use Twitter without ever signing up. I believe it's important to establish the value in using it rather than using it and attempting to find the value.

What a lot of people don't realize that Twitter is a very powerful search engine. Just like Google, if you know how to use the search effectively you can find pretty much anything. And one of those effective ways is leveraging the power of hashtags.

What is a hashtag you ask?

From The Twitter Fan Wiki: Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol.

Basically, its a tag in your post so that you or someone else can find it later or track it as it is happening. For example, lets say you are watching the Super Bowl. You want to hear what other folks are saying about the game. You can do a search (on search.twitter.com) for the hashtag #SuperBowl and see what others talking about. Many TV shows, events, companies, and more are creating hashtags to monitor conversations and just generally engage with other followers.

Right, but how does this help you find stuff for your classroom?

Well, there are loads of great educational hashtags that have been created that you can search out and see what folks are posting. Are you a Social Studies teacher or need history resources? Check out #sschat. Maybe English is your thing. So there is #engchat. Perhaps you are looking for just general education resources. Then you should do a search for #edchat.

There are so many more educational hashtags out there. Lucky for all of us we have CybraryMan. Jerry (his real name) has collected several pages of hashtagsfor all of us to enjoy.

You may notice that many of the EDU hashtags include the word "chat" in them. There are some great chats on Twitter around various issues in education. (I wrote about this a while back.) Jerry also has a great page of how to take part in the EDU Chats and the times of various chats as well.

Oh and I get asked a lot how to create a hashtag. Simple my friends, simple. You just create it! There isn't a special form or permission you need in order to make a hashtag you just make one. My advice is, however, do a search on Twitter for the hashtag you want to use, just to make sure other stuff isn't posted to it already. (That can save a lot of time and embarrassment later.) Once you have it in mind, start using it. This can be great for schools/districts or classrooms to create tags to allow other members of the community to see whats being said to follow along with events, games, etc.

The point of all this is that while you may be a connected educator or you use Twitter regularly, there may be some educators around you who just don't see the point. Or they say they don't want to use Twitter. Well, the hashtag provides a way for anyone, no matter who, to reap the rewards of the information that flows across the Twitterverse and have it delivered to you when ever you need it.

A while back I wrote about Skype and how to get started using it. If you are new or thinking about starting definitely check out that post.

Then yesterday I saw this:

"Calling classes in North Carolina, USA or nearby states to join a book club http://t.co/cnmm1IBx #wsfcs"

So when I saw that tweet I immediately passed it along to all my NC folks. Then I got to thinking. There are lots of great projects out there that need a partner and people ask all the time how to get connected via Skype.

I headed over to the Skype In The Classroom website and discovered there are loads of great projects going on that any class with a Skype account can join. Here are just a few:

High School Literature Discussions-IB English Literature students in Wisconsin are interested in exchanging ideas and conversation via skype, ning, or video conference on various novels and readings including, Like Water for Chocolate (Esquivel), Into the Beautiful North (Urrea), or Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Alexie). Through this exchange, students will share perspectives on literature, school, global issues, and life.

Thankful For Thanksgiving?Looking for classes to Skype in and tell my classes, a wide variety of Grades 1-4, where they are from and what they are thankful this Thanksgiving. This should be just a quick skype call, with 2 or 3 students telling us why they are thankful. And, we will tell your class.

Practicing Graphing-I am looking for a class to play battleship graphing with my class on September 28th or 29th. I have two PreAlgebra classes. One starts at 9:00am central time and the other starts at 9:50am central time. I will provide you with the board template.

What Does Your Sky Look Like?My students are currently studying the solar system and moon phases. I would like to create a project with students from different parts of the world to show students how the Earth is positioned, thus causing different moon phases around the world.

Biomes Around The World- 4 teachers of 3rd/4th graders (8-10 year olds), studying topics such as deserts, rainforests, and oceans would like to connect with other classes learning similar topics or who live near one of the habitats. We would like to Skype with a class, an expert, or anyone who can help us learn about these topics. We can tell you about our biomes- mountain, lake, wetlands!

Regional Skype Pals-We are studying all 50 states, one region at a time. We would like to connect with classrooms all around the country who could give us information on how it is to live in other parts of the country.

That is just a handful. There are other great projects on the site and you can sort by subject area and age level to find the one that is perfect for your class. You can also post a project that you want to do or if you are looking for a speaker, Skype will help you find one to bring into your class.

All you need is a Skype account and an account on the Skype In Education site and you are ready to go.

So why not start creating that wall-less classroom, one Skype call at a time!