Sandy Kendell @SandyKendell@qoto.org

If you see this toot (yeah this one right here), can you boost it for me? It will help my new server federate with the wider Mastodon network. 🚀 🙏

Well, I'm now here, too.

Lecturer in Education & Technology and Faculty Learning Technology Lead at IOE, University College London.

I teach Learning Design with UCL Knowledge Lab's LD platform.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/learning-designer

Research:
#EdTech #OnlineLearning #DistanceEducation #HigherEducation
#LearningDesign #LearningSciences #TechnologyTransfer #InnovationAdoption

Other interests: #Audio #Video #Sound #MusicProduction #MediaProduction #PerformingArts #MassParticipation #CharityGovernance

Woke up to find the twitter exodus **Still** accelerating. The last 24 hours has been the biggest influx yet, up over 20% from yesterday. We are seeing 1000 new users a day now!

Technology Integration Specialist for the largest independent high school in the United States. It's been a long time since I posted a "hello world" style message to introduce myself!
New to Mastodon, obviously, and looking for my #edtech community!

Hello Mastodon! I'm trying this as an alternative to Twitter. Hoping to find like-minded folks to network with soon! #edtech #education #k12 #informationliteracy

Consider this the #mastodon missing-toot-#timeline-#cheatsheet
(not mine, and I whish I'd seen it earlier when I did).

BTW if you're looking for a simple and imho intuitive #androidclient @Tusky really nails it!

#Mastodon #feditips

Flowchart describing the visibility of a public toot per use case.

Okay this might be a long post

One thing that I realised is making #twittermigration harder for people to switch is because the whole concept can feel daunting & overwhelming for non-tech savvy people.

With Twitter to them it was straight forward and easy to find topics they enjoy but with mastodon its a bit different.
So if you're new to mastodon or you want to introduce someone to mastodon here are some tips, useful sites & tools:
### Tips:
- Choosing a home instance isn't as importance as it seems, don't overthink it. Yes moderation rules & policies may differ but they all have one thing in common: Be a decent human. You **always** have the option to migrate your account to a new instance.
- Toots (or posts if you think toots are cringe ) are what we call micro-blogging instead of tweets
- You’re supposed to "boost" AKA "reblog" toots that you like.Since Mastodon does not have an algorithm that surfaces toots that have been liked a lot, boosting is the best way to help spread stuff that you like, and to show appreciation. (credit to @orsvarn for this comment)
- Another way to fill your timeline with content you enjoy is to: Find other people with similar interests, follow them, favourite their posts, boost their posts, use hashtags. rinse, repeat. (credit to @garry)
- If you ever feel yourself getting sucked into arguments on the #Fediverse, you might want to take advantage of the instance mute/block feature!
Instances tend to foster a culture, so if you find people from a specific site tend to be bothering you, muting/blocking that instance will keep other members of that community from bothering you as well.
- Finally do not share private/sensitive information via DMs on Mastodon. Direct Messages are not E2E. **Keep it in mind**

### Useful tools & resources:
[Twitodon](https://twitodon.com/) - Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon
[FediFinder](https://fedifinder.glitch.me/)- Similar to Twitodon
[Fedi Tips](https://fedi.tips/) - an informal, unofficial guide for non-technical people who want to use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse
[Fedi Directory](https://fedi.directory) - A human-curated small selection of accounts to spice up your timeline.
[Trunk](https://communitywiki.org/trunk) -Trunk allows you to mass-follow a bunch of people in order to get started with Mastodon or any other platform on the Fediverse
[Fediverse.info](https://fediverse.info/explore/people) -growing list of people and topics can help you discover mutual interests with people around the world
**Mobile Apps:**
[Metatext for iOS ](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/metatext/id1523996615)
[Tusky for Android ](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keylesspalace.tusky&hl=en&gl=USt)

Lastly if you are interested in setting up your own instance you can learn via https://learnfoss.org/ its completely free and its made by the wonderful @stux

I apologize for the long post lol, just hope this helps anyones transition over

What I've learned so far about how it works: 1) Use #MetaText app if you are on iOS so you can insert images/ #animatedGIFs ; 2) For Animated GIFs, get Gboard/GIF Keyboard, too; 3) Android users might check out #Tusky app; 4) Use Alt-Text for your images, videos, and animated GIFS; 5) Add #hashtags to every post so others across instances can find you... #introduction #MastodonTips #Tips #Tip