Tweet! Tweet!

Lots of people have been writing about Twitter lately and the role that it might have/has in education. I was slow to jump on board the Twitter-wagon but am now pretty hooked!! This weekend I was able to have some face-to-face time with Tweetchers in my network - which makes the virtual network even more meaningful!! (Let's face it - there are some things that just can't be tweeted!) And being able to virtually share the excitement of the recent election with my Twitter friends was an experience not to be missed!

Angela gives a great overview of Twitter and how educators are using it on her blog - so if you are not familiar with it, you should click here to read about it. I spent a great deal of my early Twitter days working off of the main home page but hated that I always had to manually refresh. I've moved to TweetDeck because it has a nice little "tweet" when there are new "posts" so I can flip to it when I need a break from whatever I am working on. As with the main Twitter page, there are some glitches at time but there are always other options!

Thinking about how I use Twitter, I realize that it is much like how I read blogs only the information is shorter and quicker to read. In many ways, it also acts much like my RSS feed as many of the people that I follow tweet when they have updated their blogs. With my local network - it has very often been a lifeline for me. I can tweet out a question or participate in any one of the numerous conversations we have on topics like formative assessment or use of certain tools. When I am stuck for a resource, they are there faster than a speeding bullet!

I also find myself posting blog entries less often, particularly on Grand Rounds, because the interactivity of Twitter allows me to process with a network rather than create some grand posting where there may or may not be a comment left. (I guess that is why Twitter is micro-blogging!) That is probably better for the folks who read my blogs because I can get the "beta" version out with the folks via Twitter!!

What is interesting is the turn many of us have taken with respect to sharing links and resources rather than just sharing what we are doing (although that is a nice aspect as well.) I think much of that can be attributed to Angela Maiers as a result of this post and her Twitter engagement formula. I can't say that I follow that formula exactly but I do work on it!

As the Twitterati (thanks Mrs.BrownDog)share resources, I find that I cross over into another social networking tool and tag most of them in my Delicious account. I have different people in that network as well, so if I want to share these resources with them I can tag them. I had been having my Tweets update my Facebook account as well, but as I realized that my friends there didn't quite "get" Twitter and therefore I was heckled more than I needed to be about the updates, I took it off.

The only thing that I wish I could do is snap a picture with my cell phone and easily use that to update on Twitter (or a Twitter-like program). Since I have working so hard on capturing visuals, it would fit nicely into my work. Fisher1000 shared TwitPic today and while I had seen it before, it didn't seem to have the ease I wanted. I am going to hang back a bit and see how he uses it before I take the leap myself. That is yet another great thing about Twitter - I can see the learning of my fellow Tweets and they can see mine.

It is interesting to see how my social networks are crossing and inter-weaving - that some people use one tool but not the others. I am wondering what was the tipping point for each tool - so that I can think about how I introduce them to teachers and can share our learning.