Welcome to the first ever TAGGY Awards!  Please join us and have some fun while learning about some of the most important educational hashtags on Twitter.
Don’t know what a hashtag is? Click here to learn more.
Vote for your favorite educational hashtag here.   Voting ends in 7 days, and if you don’t think any of these tags deserve to win the TAGGY award, write-in your vote in the comments area.

P.S. Since it’s hard to actually give a prize to a non-human (hashtags, as much as we love them, aren’t human…yet), please …

One of the best ways to stay up-to-date on the latest in education (other than a free subscription to the SimpleK12 blog) is to follow hashtags on Twitter. Before we get into which hashtags to watch, let’s look at what they are.
Hashtags (#) are basically keywords for a tweet. Depending on the content of your tweet, you can use different hashtags so other teachers looking for similar content can find your tweet. For example, if I just found a new online resource for teachers, I might tweet about it and …

The following is a guest post from our good friend, Steven Anderson, who is a District Instructional Technologist in Winston-Salem, NC.  Steven works with district and school administrators on how to harness the power of technology to enhance learning.

Twitter For Administrators
So, you’ve heard about Twitter. You are curious. You think it would be a great means of communication for your school or your district. But where do you start? How do you proceed?
It’s simple my friends!
Here is my primer and some advice for schools (and districts) that want to …

Twitter addiction is real.  And if you’re reading this post, likely the question you should be asking yourself isn’t “Am I addicted to Twitter?” but “How addicted am I?!”.
You likely found this blog through a retweeted Tweet that another Twitter addict sent out… and you may have already retweeted yourself before even reading this.
Here’s my list of 21… do you think you could add any to this list?  How many of these apply to you?
1.  You feel it’s your personal mission to convert non-tweeters.
2.  You have a Twitter client on …

If you know SimpleK12… you likely know how active we are on Twitter.  If you aren’t already, please follow @SimpleK12 or view our profile.   We also have a Twitter account just for our Teacher Learning Community members, @TLC_edu.
We’re huge fans of Twitter for education, and here are 7 reasons why you should join Twitter today.
1.  Collaboration:  You can connect with, meet, and work with other teachers from around the world.   There is a whole world out there…waiting for you to explore. Just check out what great things this educator, @Web20Classroom, …

Social media?  Check.
Webinars?  Check.
Conferences?  Check.
EdCamps, TeachMeets, and the like? Check.
Yes, I know… you get it!
You use social media, webinars, conferences, and other tools and events to stay in touch with colleagues and to learn.
All of these things help you build your own personal learning network (PLN).
You’ve become a social learner!  You don’t have to have a classroom or an organized curriculum… you go to your PLN more often than not when you want to learn something.
But, here’s the rub… at least as it applies to education and educators:
Only a teeny …

There’s no denying that Twitter is a great service – especially for teachers and education.   Here are some not-so-common Twitter add-ons you may not have known existed.
Twitbin: Twitbin is a firefox extension that allows you to keep up with all of your Twitter conversations right from your browser sidebar.
BubbleTweet:  Share quick video comments with your twitter followers in a floating bubble.
Shareaholic: Shareaholic is the simplest way to share, spread, and save interesting webpages via your social networks, email, blogs, IM, and more.
Twitaholic:  Displays users in a ranking format based on …