Sometimes I feel like a Twit!

So this is the blog we have been waiting all term for...the Twitter blog! Well I can't honestly say that this is really the case for me. I can hardly wait for this course to end so I can pare down my Twittter list so I don't have to know who is at what airport or going to what town...On the bright side I realize by the number of parodies of Twitter on YouTube that I am not alone...here is but one example. This may sound quite negative, but I really don't get Twitter. Of all of the social networking tools that are available to us Twitter is the one that I don't seem to be able to weed out the good stuff from the "digital noise" as William Ferriter calls it of daily events that I do not need to know in people's lives. Maybe this is because I read to much of everything and haven't been able to skim well enough for Twitter. Perhaps it is because I don't have a cell phone and Twitter is more for the mobile set. After all is it important for me to know that there are no seats available in the Detroit Starbucks - when I live in Union Bay? Do I need to know that @Mastermaq is "sleeping as of 22:31 via Ping.fm" ( and by the way how can he type that tweet while he is sleeping? -that seems suspicious to me!)  But aside from the mundane and the banal what can Twitter really do for me? If I could sift through all of the sand and various other sediment and debris flowing down the river of life in Twitter tweets I'm sure I can find some really valuable particles of gold. But like all prospectors it just doesn't seem like I'll strike it rich when nothing seems to sparkle in the bottom of my pan for such a long time. But alas I shall track my Twitter journey in the three parts starting with...

Learning About the Tool

I created my Twitter account at the beginning of the course in January. Prior to that time I had heard of Twitter but really wasn't interested in it; after all there are blogs, wikis, webpages and emails to read, write and make note  of...who has the extra time? I would log onto the Twitter site and catch up on what people were talking about...at first just the other members of our class and the people on the list we were told to follow for the class. Gradually I added a few others, Andrew Hallam a teacher turned investment advisor whom I taught with many years ago, the Twisst site which I read about while browsing tweets and others of personal interest. I now follow 32 different "twitterers."

Twitter, I have learned,  has its own language including hashmarks, retweet, direct message and others as found on this video from butterscotch.com.  (The complete series of 10 videos to learn about Twitter can be found here)Learning the language makes it easier to navigate around Twitter and understand the flow of conversation that is constantly buzzing around as well as making better use of the limited s[pace you have to "tweet." I particularly find the hashmarks useful as one quick entry into the search area of the appropriate hashmark and I can see if there is any news for the group. For instance if I want to know what people are talking about in Edmonton I can type #YEG (yeg is from Edmonton's airport code) into the search and any hashmarked tweets will appear! For this course I use #tldl in the search box. I have to admit that the program is pretty slick..the feature for direct messaging is really fast...just type a 'd' at the beginning of a tweet  and the "What's happening?" title becomes "Direct Message:" although this does cost a couple of the 140 allowable characters per tweet!

I have also changed the look of my Twitter page using the "settings" and then the "design" buttons. These are fairly limited, but there is also the offer to use Themeleon to customize your page further. I didn't use time to explore this option as it required registering on another site and I'm happy enough with the simple customization offered on the design page.

The last thing I'll talk about are the links in Twitter. To me they are the most useful part of the whole Twitter experience. When I take the time to sift through the airport visits, coffee shop hassles and other bits of useless information I am left with the links... the golden sparkle in the bottom of my pan, the lifeline to new ideas and information that relate to my career, personal life and interests. Due to the immediacy of Twitter I have never followed a link that has been out of date... the information is always current. This is a big step up from some websites that seem liken they are rarely updated. This is where the list of peole I follow begins to make sense to me... the sharing of resources and information...maybe Twitter isn't so bad after all?!

Using the Tool for my Own Personal Learning

Personally I  can see Twitter as a way to find and share resources, but as I mentioned before Twitter is the "right now" medium and as I do not have a cell phone I feel left behind by its 'What are you doing right now?" type format. I think my use of Twitter tells me that I am of an older generation of web users that seek information and not of the "new" Web 2.0 generation that use the web socially. My brother-in-law is a great example of a Web 2.0 user as he sends updates to say he is at the ferry line-up or at the Starbucks or whatever...this drives me nuts...I don't need to now this stuff! But there is stuff that I need to know and that is as my role of parent...currently my children are very young and are not using Twitter but if they were I'd definitely want to know what they were sending out....Jeff Ramone in his article "Private Eyes Are Watching You: Twitter Oversharing and Its Bizarre Real-World Consequences" brought to my attention that using FourSquare and Twitter actually allows people to know where you are...this also means where you are not which relates to the public awareness that is being raised at Pleaserobme.com. As a parent I am concerned about my children oversharing their information and becoming vulnerable to harm in some form. Having said this as an example of the dangers of twitter I must balance this with the lighter side of Twitter...the website Overheard.it quotes silly or sad quotes and I have found many gems here including the hashtags #whywecantfireteachers and #Educationiskey which leads me to...

Using the Tool in terms of Teaching and Learning

This picture is definitely worth a thousand words...many of the things that can be done using Twitter in Edcuation.
Much like wikis and nings I can see a huge potential for Twitter in teaching and learning. despite my earlier rantings of the digital noise produced by Twitter there are many reasons to embrace this technology. In William ferriter's article "Why Teachers Should Try Twitter." he outlines the most obvious which is to make new contacts to share resources, but he also talks about how the use of Twitter has deepened his understanding of using technology to differentiate learning for students.

Twitter can also be used for other activities as cited on the TeachPaperless site here. The article this link leads to also stresses that Twitter can be set up to only allow certain followers  (ie a class) which addresses some of the safety concerns of Web 2.0 use in the classroom. Once again through this article I can see that we need to teach our students the proper and responsible use of sites like Twitter which is only possible if these sites are not blocked at the district level. I really see a need to free up the access of the internet including Twitter to help our students make sense of their digital world...gee it looks like I'm fighting for Twitter...I've come a long way in just one blog post!!:) Sometimes I feel like a Twit for not seeing all the good of Twitter at first!