1. I was one of the people who thought Twitter was ridiculous and only for those people who either had
nothing better to do, or thought the whole world cared about what they did every minute of the day.
2. I am addicted to Twitter. (nixon1972)
I don't tweet very much, but I check it multiple times throughout the day to see who else has tweeted. I love that I can choose who I follow, and who follows me. I love that the tweets have to be succinct, which is great for me, as I can easily get distracted or off topic. Twitter forces me to focus and get to the point. This is a great exercise for my students. I think I will try this in class, limiting them to use a certain number of words, when they have to write a summary.
What really surprised me was the variety and sheer number of options to follow. I had no idea that I could follow news organizations and educational groups, I thought it was just people. I also like that I can see how current the post is and go back and look at the posts I missed before I joined.
I have found twitter to be useful as a professional when others tweet snippets about conferences and other educational or tech facts. This is a quick way to spread the word about some items, like word of mouth, only an entire group gets the information at once. I can see similarities to IM and email, but again, having to be succinct sometimes makes all the difference. I admit I sometimes skim through an email to find the point, I don't have to do that with Twitter. I am definitely a convert!
"Sad birds twittered sleeplessly,
Calling, calling lost companions."
- Unyielding By Rabindranath Tagore
YES! A convert! I know most people have the same initial reaction that you had. But Twitter can be such a rewarding, low time investment Web 2.0 tool to use as a professional.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of using it with students. I might find some resources for this for the blog post.
You and Thing 1 are Twitter junkies now!
ReplyDelete