Twitter gets a lot of negative press in certain circles from people who say it’s a purely social tool that serves no practical purpose whatsoever. For example, I’ve got colleagues who scoff at the mere mention of the application and poo-poo it as a complete time-waster and second rate social network.
I say it depends on who you’re following and who’s following you; and as importantly, how you use it. Twitter can be as much or as little as you want it to be and if used effectively can be both a time-saver and valuable source of information.
Over time I’ve developed a really valuable network of professional contacts whom I follow and interact with regularly, and who’s input I value tremendously. They include IT professionals, educational technologists, elearning specialists, blogging evangelists, friends, and more recently edubloggers.
The result has been some very insightful experiences, and a source of rapid collaboration on questions and ideas.
For example, in the case of a series of Tweets this morning, Twitter enabled me to have an entire conversation with another edublogger whom I’d read but never met before.
kolson29: twitterpoll: why DON’T you use edublogs? just curious as I can’t find a reason to blog anywhere else….
mbogle: @kolson29 – I only recently discovered edublogs and have gotten nice and comfy on wordpress.com. I also couldn’t see how to use my domain.
mbogle: @kolson29 – I definitely go to edublogs as first port of call for edublogging resources though.
kolson29: @mbogle the domain issue is something I’m running into as well – not an option. do you blog with students?
mbogle: @kolson29 – I’m in a non-academic unit but really interested in starting a project studying real-world implementation of blogs in courses.
kolson29: @mbogle seems to be the popular thing to do these days
mbogle: @kolson29 – LOL that it is. My fear is that without proper case studies, blogs will start to be implemented really superficially.
mbogle: @kolson29 – It may be just me, but it seems that the literature is currently really light on real case-studies. Seems heavy on theory
kolson29: @mbogle seems to me that everyone has something to say, but mostly just written ON blogs, not much “published”, so hard to cite
mbogle: @kolson29 – Absolutely. Esp for academic legitimacy, proper studies need to appear in recognised journals using proper research methods.
mbogle: @kolson29 – Modelling best practice is important too of course, but to influence change we need to develop a presence outside of the tech.
kolson29: @mbogle have you seen jeff felix’s study?
mbogle: @kolson29 – No I haven’t. Can you give me a link or journal reference? Thanks!
kolson29: @mbogle alas, i’m not the one to do it – I’ll just read and cite yours when it’s done……….. about 12 hours ago from twhirl in reply to mbogle
mbogle: @kolson29: LOL I’ll see what I can do. I’ll need to rally some assistance I suspect, but there’s a definite interest so I’m hopeful.
To me the above conversation could have easily taken place in the halls of a university building. Topics spanned elearning, social software, research methods, journal publications and web hosting issues. Had this been at an educational conference this would have been called networking. Why should it be any less significant to education that it happened to occur via Twitter?
This is not to say that I’m advocating an immediate integration of Twitter into all university courses. What I am saying is the tool serves a legitimate purpose and offers a real value to those who opt to use it; and this extends to the hallowed halls of higher education as well.
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