I have to admit I remain quite a sceptic about the usefulness of Twitter to education, however an objective research ethic dictates that I give the application the benefit of the doubt and approach it with an open mind. You’ll notice his hasn’t stopped me from embedding my updates in this blog though.
For those who’ve yet to experience it first-hand, Twitter is a bit of a hybrid – part SMS, part web chat, part mini-blog, all phenomenon.
Upon creating an account you are given your own Twitter page where you can post brief – and I mean brief – updates of no more than 160 or so characters. If you don’t feel like doing the math, that’s no more than one or two short sentences.
Like all Web 2.0 apps – and in fact a large percentage of static sites as well – your updates are made available as RSS feeds, or as a widget that can be embedded in your website or blog (see the “Got Twitter?” section in the right column of this blog). Importantly Twitter can also be used in conjunction with internet chat programs like iChat or MSN, and even your mobile phone in select countries – sorry Australians, this feature was recently deactivated for us. Once configured, you can submit updates via your mobile or a text chat as if you were speaking with a real person – which you are really.
Additionally, the flow of information is not one-directional. If desired you can also set Twitter to submit updates via the above methods as well. Twitter’s capacity to deliver multi-directional synchronous and asynchronous communication and discussion via a host of different mediums makes it quite a powerful tool – but in this power also lay the potential for mass chaos.
The more people you have on your friend’s list (both individuals must list each other as friends), or whom you are following (you list them as a friend), the more notifications you receive. Some of my esteemed colleagues have several hundred people on their respective lists, which means their phones and/or messengers must be ringing off the hook! A moderated and organised discussion this certainly is not.
Nonetheless, it is a rapid way of communicating with a large number of people – even more so than explode-list emails, which limit you to email inboxes almost exclusively.
I’ve only been using Twitter for a few days now, so I shall not cast judgment on the application’s relevance to higher education until I’ve had the opportunity to use it for a while. Its collaborative potential is its strong point to be sure. This area if anything else, is where its usefulness will be.
