Curious about Twitter? Check out a Twitter chat Tues night between students and scientists

Tuesday night, Jan 10th, at 8 pm Central (6 pm Pacific) there will be a Twitter chat between scientists / science bloggers and a group of high school students.  

If you're interested in seeing how Twitter can work in this case, drop on by and check it out. 

In fact, you don't even have to wait until Tuesday. You can get a glimpse of the beginning discussion right now!

All you have to do is click this link:  #scistuchat

#scistuchat is an example of a hashtag.  We use hash tags to categorize information in many settings.  The symbol "#" is called a "hash" and the text that follows it is the tag.  

To drop in on Tuesday's, click  #scistuchat and you'll see the conversation at Twitter.  You'll need to refresh your browser from time to time to read new Tweets and watch the conversation unfold in real time. 

You can also participate in the chat!

1. Go to http://twitter.com and make yourself an account.
2. On Tuesday night at 8 pm Central (6 pm PST), log in to Twitter.
3. Type #scistuchat in the Search area and click the Return key.

You'll see a list of all the tweets tagged with the  #scistuchat hashtag.

To respond to a point, move your mouse over the tweet.  You'll see some new options appear.

Click Reply and a window will appear where you can respond.  The number (126) below the window shows how many characters I can use in my response.  As they say, "brevity is the soul of twit."  

Notice that the twitter name of the person I started to reply to appears in the window.  If I were replying to a comment, I would also paste #scistuchat in my response so that others could find it.

Replying to a tweet and adding hashtags help people keep track of the conversation.

Got questions?  Ask 'em below.