Tweet! I'm ready for Twitter!

Umm.. tweet?... tweet…tweet!  Anyone listening?   I have to admit I’m afraid of all birds, so already the thought of Twitter gets me feeling a tad anxious. 

Reflections on the process of learning about Twitter

            Twitter is a social media tool that allows you to send out messages to your followers in 140 characters or less.  Essentially, these messages or 'tweets' answer the question, "What are you doing?" or "What's happening?"   It allows people following you to get instantaneous updates from you.  I signed up for Twitter early in September and quickly started following many individuals (some that were suggested and some that were of my own interest).  I soon started receiving tweets from people that I’d never heard of before (i.e. Stephen Abram) and people that I’ve been watching for years (i.e. Suze Orman).

         Signing up was relatively easy, as was finding people to ‘follow’.  However, what I found to be difficult was actually reading the tweets.  I’d check in every couple days and scroll through.  I'd follow some of the links within the tweets to start developing a sense of what is 'tweet-worthy.'  To be honest many of the messages were not what I was expecting.  Most were of quite ‘shallow’ and left me wondering why I’m following them. 

         Sending a tweet for the first time was odd… what to say?   I sent out a tweet letting everyone know that I was heading to Lister Hall to a concert.  A friend’s brother was playing at ‘Lister Fest.”  Now, if I had friends or acquaintances living at Lister, then they would know I was attending and to look out for me.

            Personally, I think there’s some overlap here with Facebook.  Both allow you to keep track of your friends and what they’re up to.  Also, they both allow you to share your ‘status.’  You could either ‘tweet’ or update your status on Facebook that you’re going for coffee with Oprah.  However, after listening to Mack Male’s session, I’ve realized that with Twitter you can ‘get away with’ tweeting often throughout the day, but if you were to do the same on Facebook (i.e. post status updates) frequently, then people would become irritated because you would be ‘clogging up’ the live feed.

         To get a different experience with Twitter, I logged onto the site using my iPhone.  Instead of seeing an array of tweets from all of the people I’m following, I saw that the entire screen was filled with tweets from one person: mastermaq.  Some of his ‘tweets’ were absolutely useless, including one saying: “Trying to think of the last game I played.. ah yes.  Worms on my iPod touch.”  Okay… good to know?  Maybe?  However, he somewhat redeems himself by sending out a tweet saying, “SelfChecker is working with local school authorities. Interesting way for students to write a test and get immediate feedback.”

         Reflecting on this new iPhone experience, I’m led to think that it just wasn’t enough.  It was basically just viewing the site, but with my phone. So, I decided link my phone directly with Twitter. I registered with Twitter by texting “start” to 21212.  This allowed me to easily tweet by just texting my tweet to 21212.  However, I still wasn't receiving tweets through instant message.  I'd need to log onto the site to do that, which I guess is better than receiving text messages every few minutes for every single tweet.

         Just when I thought I was quite well versed on Twitter, I listened to Mack Males’s Elluminate session.  It really helped me to gain a new understanding some aspects of Twitter including:  hash tags (i.e. ‘#YEG’) which help categorize your tweets, and ‘bit.ly’ which shortens a web address so that it doesn’t take up much of your 140 characters.  If you see a hashtag and don’t know what it means, you can check at wthashtag.org

         In terms of learning about social media tools such as Twitter Male (2009) suggests a social media boot camp, but he keys in on experience; trying it out and getting to know it.

Discussion of Twitter in terms of my own personal learning

            I think I may continue to utilize Twitter.  I enjoy being ‘the first to know’ and I think this tool will enable me to do this.  By following CBC News, I have been able to stay up to date with news and current affairs.

         My friends are split on Twitter.  About a third are against it and unwilling to even sign up.  Another third have signed up, only to either deactivate their account or not utilize.  And the last third?  They’re all about it.  A friend of mine who is a photographer uses it to ‘get rid of steam.’  His clients, friends and acquaintances are all on Facebook, which he uses to promote his business, but for Twitter it’s a different story. He uses it to vent about sessions, which is not, I believe, how most businesses use it, but that’s how he utilizes it.

         Twitter has me conjuring up images of Scrooge: tweets of past, present, and future.  Many celebrities like to tweet in the past (ie. went for a run in central park earlier today.  Gosh, I love this city!).  This allows them to not be mobbed by people who have received their tweets.  I actually don't like when they do this because it doesn't answer the questions, "What are you doing?" but rather "What did you do?"  It provides a less voyeuristic experience because it doesn't allow you to know what your favourite celbrity is actually currently doing. This brings me to ‘present’ tweeters.  People who do this include twitterers who are at a conference, a part of an event, or people just generally connected and wanting others to be aware of what they're up to.  I think this is what many tweets are like.  For me, I’ve been falling into the category of future tweeter.  I’ve been ‘tweeting’ mostly about what I’m going to do.  That is, until I signed gained access through my phone.  Now, I'm sending out more current tweets (ie.  Waiting in an outside lineup to see 'New Moon"  Worth the cold?)

Discussion of Twitter in terms of teaching & learning

            I would venture to guess that Twitter is going to be used in educational settings more and more over the coming years, especially by teachers, secretaries, and administrators.

Hearst Elementary School in Washington, DC has been using Twitter to stay connected with parents.  Tweets of events in the school are sent out throughout the week.  The school also uses tweets to notify parents and guardians of “unscheduled notices regarding delays or closings.”  I think this is much more efficient, especially on the school end of things.  Having to do a ‘call-out’ would take quite a bit of time.  However, would all parents receive these tweets?

A high school Language Arts class at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota is using social media including Twitter within their class.

I think this could be powerful.  As students are working on a project, they could send out tweets concerning an issue they're having with the project.  People who know how to help them can respond, whereas other students could disregard the tweets.

Walker (2009) suggests many great benefits for educators to use Twitter in Schools, including the idea that “Twitter can be like a virtual staffroom where teachers can access in seconds a stream of links, ideas, and resources from a hand-picked selection of global professionals.” This is great because you’re not limited to the people who you work with or who are in your local community. 

Walker (2009) also explains that we can get instant feedback on the ideas that we share; it’s almost like using it as a sounding board to check in to see if we’re on the right track. People could tweet or message back with tips or encouragement. 

Also, if I wasn't able to attend  PD session, speech or workshop, I could still partake in a sense by receiving tweets from people who are there partaking.  This would be beneficial because I could not only 'read their thoughts' but I could also see the 'content' through various perspectives (i.e. the cautious optimist, the pessimist, etc.)

One con, which Male (2009) points out is that Twitter is “not a really good platform for coming back and seeing what you wrote a month ago or a year ago.” It’s more of a “real time platform.” For a record that you can look back to, he suggests a blog.

Another con, which I believe is annoying is that people who are at a conference, workshop or meeting who should be paying attention to a speaker are actually tweeting. Now, some probably wait until break time, but I could see this becoming more and more of an issue unless norms are established. However the sharing at breaks can be powerful, Mack (2009) points out, especially is you have this “powerful networking capacity with them all the time (i.e. their network of twitterers).

References:

Hearst Elementary School http://www.hearstdc.org/tech-1/twittercom

Male, Mack. (2009). Elluminate session

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. 2nd Ed. Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Walker, Laura. (2009) Nine reasons to Twitter in Schools.