Twitter

Everyone seems to be a-twitter over twitter. In the Vancouver Sun newspaper several weeks ago there was an article extolling the power of twitter in getting up to date information about the Okanagan fires not only to people who might be travelling in the area, but also to keep news agencies updated as twitter was faster than any other tool they had. In USA Today on July 29th there was another article about how the British Government is now encouraging its employees to use twitter and has published a 20 page set of guidelines for its use. The article went on to say that the British and US governments are both actively using twitter to keep voters and constituents informed. President Obama has a twitter stream managed by the Democratic National Committee which encourages its over 1.8 million followers to tweet their congress members about political issues. Another twitter account 'promotes official government news.' Back in Britain, various government agencies tweet their activities and the public can follow the daily movements of their ministers. Canada, Denmark, Israel and Spain also have government twitter presences.

According to Will Richardson in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, twitter is a 'running river of conversation and ideas,' where you can 'share, connect and create with many of like minds and interests.' Soren Gordhamer says the main focus of twitter is to discover and share news, but he adds it can also tell you a lot about the person who is tweeting. Joyce Valenza and Doug Johnson claim you can get 'great nuggets of information on tweets.' It appears to be a fairly simple information gathering tool where people are encouraged to share their ideas and thoughts with others. In the article comparing facebook and twitter, by  Gordhamer, most responders who used twitter really liked it, although a few did not.

I asked a friend what she thought of Twitter, and she said it was 'too much,' she didn't like it. My time on twitter left me with the impression it is great for extroverts. People who are extremely social and feel they have a lot to share. They are the people that you love to have at a party because they like to talk and they like to listen. They are great conversationalists.  As Michael Martine points out in his article Twitter is Like Sex , to truly appreciate the twitter experience, you have to give as well as get. The best people to follow are those that provide cool links, humorous tidbits and lively conversation. They have to be very social and really enjoy interacting with all sorts of people. 

So what does this mean to a teacher-librarian in a school setting? Will Richardson warns in his book that Twitter can be 'too wild west for most school situations,' which makes me think that it is better to use for connecting with other professionals and using it for professional development, more than in a classroom setting. Miguel Guhlin suggests that Twitter be used to build a professional learning network, or a support group. Twitter can provide inspiring projects and keep you in touch with like minded people. All of these seem like great ideas.

Twitter provides all sorts of tools to help manage all the tweets. Twitterific catches updates, Tweetscan allows you to search the tweets that occur in a day. Also, you can subscribe your results to an RSS feed so that critical tweets can come to you. Charles Arthur in his Guardian article, How To Make the Most of Twitter,(trailfire/marks/295576) lists numerous 'helpful' sites for sharing, summarizing,and visualizing your tweets. Twitter was quite easy to join, and I liked using the search button. After signing on to Twitter, I accidentally added a 'celebrity' list of people to follow. I went to the help section to try to learn how to delete them, but only found a lot of other people's tweets asking the same question, and no answers. I am going to continue trying twitter for a while, but thus far I'm not sold on it.

I checked out Youthtwitter.com which is a permission only learning environment and found a lot of ads for Godaddy. When I tried to explore the page further, it went to the Godaddy homepage. I decided not to search further. 

Some educators have used twitter successfully for journal entries and recording ideas. Michael Guhlin also notes that it could be used to develop media literacy and be used as a collaborative tool, but I can't see myself doing this. I searched 'teen' on my twitter page and came up with the 'conversation' about teens using twitter, or not. As I read some of the entries, I noticed they were done in that lovely new 'language' used to communicate quickly online. As an English teacher, I object to the short cuts used in these communications as they often transfer into my English class. It is not something I would encourage ever, unless it was in developing their own note taking style. 

As I read through Michael Guhlin's twitter page, I found a link to his article 'Tear Down The Walls? Twitter in the Classroom' , in which he states he is 'not convinced that Twitter is ready for use in grade 3-12 classrooms.' I have to say that I am of like mind. It is too open and at present, am not sure about privacy or security. I could see following a specific 'conversation' with them,but I can't see letting them use it individually. For the moment, I will follow a few conversations, and throw out a few questions to see what I get. Then I'll see.