I recently sat through an edition of Cnet's Buzz Out Loud podcast during which senior editor Molly Wood decried the concept of individuals pumping up their egos by documenting their lives on blogs, or by using tools such as Twitter. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common misconception - that Twitter is basically just like a 'frequent flyer' version of a Facebook status update. Little do they know that the suggested question, "What are you doing?" is largely ignored by vast networks of professionals who use Twitter as online knowledge laboratories.
Within my own (rather small) Twitter network I can easily step into live conversations between scores of teachers, largely from the edublogging community, as they participate in perpetually evolving conversations about pedagogy. Colleagues across the world drop hints and tips about resources, leading to extremely dynamic sharing. I am also connected to the thoughts and processes of members of the software development community, so it's possible for me to observe the construction of the software infrastructure on which our thoughts travel and our collective knowledge is managed. Utilities such as Twitter and Jaiku enable increased connectivity for personal and professional networks, and fuse the functionality of instant messaging, chat rooms, and forums.
The power of Twitter lies within its simplicity and its dynamism: unlike previous generations of forums, topics are set on the fly and they don't dwell in linear pathways. The cap of 140 characters per 'Tweet' enforces brevity and encourages prolific spontaneity. Conversations within Twitter could be construed as 'messy,' consisting of fragments of dialogue between people in your network and gaps, but this can encourage users to focus on the individuals that they're 'following,' and to open up contact and possibilities to expand your personal learning network.
The lesson here is that new tools offer new possibilities, and that end-users will frequently ignore the suggested use of a tool in order to explore how far they can exploit it (ie. get practical use out of it). Twitter is the closest technology to telepathy that we have right now. It seems strange that even people in the technology industry fail to grasp its potential.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Twitter - Frivolous by name, not by nature
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5 comments:
Jonathan, I read your post when Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach twittered the link to it - yes, you have exactly the use of Twitter for me and many of my colleagues - kind of our live edublogging think tank, links to ideas, reports from early adopters, sharing, collaboration. Sometimes a little ego here and there but we all have egos. Mostly it's about our own personal learning networks!
Jonathan, I too found your blog from Sheryl N-B's twitter. As my network grows it's amazing how my tech learning is growing from Twitter. Although some people send tweets about where they are, or what they ate (I fall into this category), I still get so many links to places like this that increase my learning. It will be very interesting to see how tools like Twitter can be used in a class with students, I can see how powerful this has been for my learning....Thanks for your post.
Mark Carls
I found your post from a link from the Tempered Radical blog but also like your descriptive snapshot of the Twitterverse. Between the announcements of Snow Days closing schools and what is being cooked for dinner, I find jewels such as announcements for webcasts and links to student project examples that make my learning so much richer the last couple of months. And using Twitter has helped me become a better sharer of resources as well. Thank you for this post. I have added it to my del.icio.us bookmarks with all the other resources gathered from Twitter.
Hi Jonathan, great synopsis. You have really captured Twitter in your post. I like the line about "being the closet thing to telepathy". Like RSS, twitter really is a glue that holds one's learning community together.
Plus, I will just echo John's comment as well.
I too read have come to read this post by way of Sheryl. As an educator, I too will use this to encourage spontaneity, but in a the context of learning a foreign language. I direct you to my post about Twitter and teaching/learning Italian. Also for my students, I hope to demonstrate that it is not just about language but the ingrained culture which underlies the words we use and the way in which we use them.
I know this too will be an education for me.
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