Do you count yourself among a growing number of educators using Twitter to enhance classroom discussion, or are you considering testing out this platform for educational purposes in the future? You’re certainly not alone; in fact, the use of Twitter in the classroom is gaining traction, and was recently featured in a New York Times article.

If you’re interested in taking your Twitter-use to the next level, check out these tools for managing classroom discussion, creating follower lists, and gathering data about your Twitter discussions. These are just a few of the many tools available to enhance your experience using the standard Twitter platform.

1. TweetChat

TweetChat is a fantastic tool for organizing a discussion on Twitter. Create a hashtag for a classroom or a project and use TweetChat to connect with everyone using the hashtag. It’s also a great way to temporarily “block out” the rest of Twitter, allowing students to focus on the discussion taking place within class, minimizing distractions from other people they may follow on Twitter.

2. Formulists

Formulists allows you to “organize, manage and expand your Twitter community through smart Twitter lists.” This is a great tool for anyone who is following a large number of people on Twitter and does not want to manually sort each user.

3. WeFollow

Wefollow is a twitter directory that lets you find users grouped by specific topic areas. Search for “education” in the wefollow directory and you’ll find a list of the top educators on Twitter you may not already be following. You could also direct your students to this site to find people to follow in their area of interest.

4. Tweetcal

Twittercal is a free service that connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar. Use the feature to manage a school calendar or upcoming classroom events. You can add events from your favorite Twitter client, and post events from your Google Calendar to your Twitter accounts.

5. Archivist

Archivist is a service that uses the Twitter Search API to find and archive tweets. It’s a great tool for capturing visualizations, or graphic representations of the data from a hashtag you might use in the classroom. It can help you understand trends, the number of Tweets over time, top contributors, words, sentiment and more.

What are you favorite Twitter tools?