To Twit or not to Twit

I've never twittered and don't plan to start but in the last few days I have read the blogs of several 'famous' edubloggers that said they are done with Twitter. What are the rest of you twits thinking of the 'next best thing'?

Tags: twitter

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Wylie on October 11, 2009 at 4:36pm

Also never twittered and not sure I ever will. I just got into Facebook today.

As much as I love using new technologies with my kids, and finding the latest and greatest tools, Twitter was never one that appealed to me. Not sure if I will take to Facebook or not, but my early impressions are good. I think I know so many people who so use it, that I just have to use it too in order to keep up with them, (if that makes sense...)

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Permalink Reply by Christy Tucker on October 11, 2009 at 4:55pm

I'm on Twitter, but I don't love it. When I'm busy, Twitter is the first thing I cut. I'll keep reading blog posts when I'm swamped with other work, but Twitter is take it or leave it for me.

That said, I enjoy some of the live chat discussions. I join the #lrnchat discussions on Thursday night sometimes, and I do find those energizing and valuable. Lrnchat is probably more corporate than would be of interest to most people on this site, but I know more education-related chats must be out there.

I've gotten some good resources from following conference tags too; if I can't go to a conference, at least I can get some of the resources if people share them. And if I was attending a conference in person, I'd want to be able to do backchannel on Twitter.

But I think you can go without it. Honestly, I think Twitter has been overhyped and will be superceded by some other company that has an actual business model. It's useful for my personal learning, but it's not as useful as reading blogs in my RSS feeder. In spite of some good examples of students being able to access experts to crowdsource questions, I probably wouldn't introduce it to K-12 students without a really good project in mind.

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Permalink Reply by Nicole on October 11, 2009 at 6:02pm

I much prefer plurk to twitter, personally

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Permalink Reply by Randee Deich on October 11, 2009 at 6:09pm

Even as a resource for your students? Since it is possible to review standards, reinforce keywords, summarize, celebrate,
and communicate with parents in less than 140 characters all at one time, just what is the downside?
While a lot of our parents do not have high speed internet, they do have data plans on their mobile phones; tweets can be sent and received from mobile phones. Again, just what is the downside of a quick way to connect to parents?

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Permalink Reply by Colette Cassinelli on October 11, 2009 at 6:43pm

There is a quite active group of educational loving teachers on Twitter but to use it effectively you must participate. You need to follow a fair number of teachers and respond to tweets and share resources. I use Tweet Deck to capture topics that I am interested in. Recently I was presenting a VoiceThread workshop so I set up a search column for "VoiceThread" and whenever it was mentioned I received the Twitter message and could review it at anytime.

Like many of you, I cannot be "on" Twitter all the time. I find that using groups and searches in Tweet Deck has made my Twitter experience more enjoyable and productivie.

Colette Cassinelli - Twitter: @ccassinelli

PS: Twitter is also great when you attend conferences. Use #hashtags with the conference name, ie, #NECC09

IMO, the "next big thing" will be Google Wave. Just got my invite and already seeing the potential for collaboration and sharing.

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Permalink Reply by PACI Dominique on October 11, 2009 at 11:22pm

I really enjoy reading some tweets although many are links to blog posts. Let's face it using a few words to say so much is an art and might just be impossible. What is really interesting is that it is fast and efficient. You can post news, ideas or mood to a lot of people in a minute without bothering about sending mails, waiting for your post to be read etc...

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Permalink Reply by Barbara on October 11, 2009 at 11:46pm

I find twitter to be one of my most productive connections with my personal learning network. I usually am on twitter over coffee in the early morning. I too use tweetdeck which I think makes twitter more user friendly.
I agree with Colette it is a give and take application which requires some active participation. I have found innumerable tools and teaching resources on twitter and been introduced to new bloggers.
Unless I switch to wave I will be on twitter...
Here is an interesting blog post I found on twitter today about twittering with elementary students 1:1- Using twitter w/ a young class http://bit.ly/KiXi5

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Permalink Reply by Sara on October 11, 2009 at 11:45pm

I have never really got into Twitter. And I don't think I will.
As a teacher, twitter seems like something that should be kept personal. There are other, better ways of interacting and geting information out to parents and students.
It would be like giving out your address and phone number, do you really want them to know all your business?

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Permalink Reply by Colette Cassinelli on October 12, 2009 at 12:06am

I don't use Twitter with my school community -- I use it to connect with other edtech teachers. I find the sharing valuable. We don't tweet about what we had for breakfast or personal things about our lives -- we tweet about cool tools, links, pedagogy, opinions .... to a smart, intellectual community who cares about our opinions and who are willing to respond. Meeting some of my Twitter friends at edtech conferences has been a wonderful experience and makes me even more likely to respond to their tweets in the future.

I understand Twitter is not for everyone but I did want to respond to the discussion board to offer a positive view of Twitter for educators who are still on the fence.

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Permalink Reply by Victor Hugo Rojas B. on October 12, 2009 at 2:22am

This is the first twit I posted: "Thanks a lot, Dixie. By the way, who's that? Is it your pet? Could be Uriel's friend? Best regards - 4:49 PM Jul 5th from web in reply to..." I've been constantly twittering since then. Up to now, I have 40 followers, I'm following 58 twitterers, and I've twittered 224 times. As I said on my 2nd twit: "Twittering is taking possession of me, and becoming as my favourite social network." That's true! I've got amazing resources on ELT and shared information with peers. TEFL and ICT in Education are the topics I check out, attentively. By the way, I'm on Twitter here.

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Permalink Reply by Kev on October 12, 2009 at 7:46am

I use Twitter for one reason only and it isn't social networking in the least. I use it because I can text notes to myself to pick up later. I've found that I often have ideas throughout the day that I then completely forget about it. A quick text to 40404 and that solves my problems.

Otherwise, I find it completely ridiculous and inefficient compared to other social media.