As I talk with various people about Twitter, I am often asked about hashtags. What are they? How do you use them? So I’m writing this post to talk about that. (Thanks, Harry, for the prompt!)

Hashtags are those words with pound signs that you often see in a tweet, such as #oer, #sschat, or #whyiwrite.

There are several ways that hashtags can be used when you’re tweeting:

• To designate an event
  Many conferences and other events have a hashtag you can use (or attendees just informally make up one — anyone can make up a hashtag). That way everyone attending the event can follow what everyone else is saying and doing.
  
  
• To identify a topic
  Topics of common interest of discussion are often indicated by a hashtag. Those of us interested in open educational resources, for example, use the tag #oer. That makes it easy to find information on that topic, even beyond the circle of people you follow.
  
• To participate in a twitter chat
  Yes, there are real-time chats on Twitter, indicated by hashtags. One of the largest for education is #edchat, which is held on Tuesdays at 12pm EST and 7pm EST. A bunch of people get on Twitter together and chat about a specified topic, using the chat hashtag. It can be fast and furious! There are many, many interest-specific chats on Twitter, and they’re a great way to learn and to find new people to follow.
• As “punctuation” or to show sentiment
  Hashtags are sometimes used to express an emotion or to add something beyond regular words.
  

There are a few ways you can search for hashtags. The simplest is to just click the hotlinked tag in Twitter. (This is a relatively new feature.) You can also use the search box in Twitter to find tweets with a certain hashtag.

If you use a Twitter client (an application to manage your social media activity, generally used by “power users”), like TweetDeck or HootSuite, you can also configure them to follow hashtags you are interested in.

Another handy web-based tool is TweetChat, which makes it easier to follow and participate in chats on Twitter.

One nice thing about hashtags is that they’re really flexible. Anyone can make up or use one. So if you’re on Twitter, try clicking on the next hashtag you see that’s of interest and see where it takes you, or use one of your own to add to your tweet content.

I got it as a personal device, but was immediately struck by its potential as a tool for mobile learning.

With the popularity of Apple iPads in schools these days, the comparisons are inevitable. The Kindle Fire runs Android, while the iPad runs iOS, but functionally, they’re pretty similar. The iPad has a camera, which the Fire doesn’t (which isn’t necessarily a disadvantage for schools, but stay tune for the next version). The iPad is somewhat larger (7.3″ x 9.5″; 1024 x 768) than the Fire (7.5″ x 4.7″; 1024 x 600). The iPad can be configured with 16 GB to 64 GB of memory;  the Fire has 8GB. (Again, stay tuned.) They both have beautiful, brilliant screens.

Currently, there is more software available for iOS than for Android (and particularly the Fire), but there hasn’t been much that I really wanted that I couldn’t get on the Fire. One minor annoyance with the Fire is that the Android Marketplace apps aren’t readily available (without rooting the device). Amazon has seemed to have begun to seen the error of its ways on this, and hopefully it will be resolved soon.

To me, a very big issue is PRICE. At $199 list, the Fire is well under half the cost of the cheapest iPad. Relative to education:

• Somewhere around $200 is the “sweet spot” for school pricing where one-to-one starts to make sense.
• I would generally rather see more devices in more kids’ hands; lower cost facilitates this.

For any of these tablet devices though, the question remains: Are they well suited to mobile learning?

Some have said that tablets are primarily media consumption devices and don’t inspire the kind of deeper creation that we want kids doing.

My responses to this are several. First, it’s hard for me not to think about all the great work, including writing and other work, that I’ve seen kids do in the past on Palm and Windows Mobile handhelds. And these handhelds of yesteryear are vastly inferior in every way to the new tablets. It’s one of the things that excites me most about these devices.

Secondly, there are a lot of great creation tools available for tablets. You can write using them with Office-type tools. (Google Docs is a favorite of mine.) You can collaborate and communicate with others. You can create graphic organizers, outlines, and notes. You can make presentations and even record audio and video. True that these devices aren’t well suited to editing and creating full multimedia presentations; that’s really a job for a more powerful laptop or desktop computer.

Finally, there are aspects of learning that do involve consumption — what we need is more differentiated, interactive consumption. Think about a textbook that is customized for each student’s needs and interests and includes opportunities for interactive practice and collaboration with others. That is the potential of tablets.

Now, if you are evaluating tablets against laptops for a one-to-one project, I personally would go with laptops in many, if not most, cases (especially for secondary students). There is little question that even a low end laptop has more capabilities than a Kindle Fire.

However, in a typical classroom, which is not one-to-one and which includes a variety of computing devices, including some laptop and desktop computers, I think the Kindle Fire is a cost effective tool that can greatly improve learning for many students.

This is the beginning of a series of devices for mobile learning that will cover the types of devices available, different manufacturers and models, prices, strengths and weaknesses, and more, including our own opinions of things to consider. We’ll be looking at the following:

• Mini-laptops (netbooks)
• Tablets
• Handheld multimedia players
• Ebook readers
• Cell phones

We hope you enjoy this series and the updates we post as things move ahead.