Just watched a video of Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, about how unexpected uses are driving growth.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/evan_williams_on_listening_to_twitter_users.html
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I think it would be great that when we post links (this particular was in our signup document) that we add a comment of our own besides the link itself. That way we know why you found that link interesting enough to post.
ReplyDeleteWhat struck me about this video was that aside from the fact that it is from the TED conference (ideas worth spreading) the video brought up two very relevant concepts... acting on the 'hunch' he had about how to spread information in a rapidfire way and the reaction to his speech in such an instantaneous way.
I'd love for someone else to pick up on those two aspects with respect to the theme of this course: digital media and its uses in education...
By the way, I think for myself the most exciting thing after following Twitter over the last few weeks is that I can search out people with one specific interest to my own and then build up a repetoire of people who altogether have any number of other interests that coincide with mine. That way i have generated their thought capacity alongside my own capacity to search for and find great bits of information that I wouldn't have had the time to find on my own! There's such a power in harnessing the brain power of a tool like this. Its limitless.
For instance, this morning I clicked on someone who had decided to follow me and what I saw was that he had chosen me for my interests in stock trading (I am a total beginner)which do coincide with those that are in his following... but then when I was randomly searching out his followers I plucked one guy that caught my eye and followed a random tweet he had made about patents and how they harm research. So i followed his link and found a posting in which there were dozens of replies concerning this one issue. So the power behind that concept of literally 'tapping someone you don't know on the shoulder' to ask him what he's thinking about right now takes on a whole new meaning in the concept of education. Its like the world's inhabitants have the human ability to be the search engine for others... ;)
As a relatively new Twitter user, I am not fully encapsulated by the phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteI am not very interested in passing my minute to minute activities generally. This is probably because I am usually in front of students teaching or in front of a computer reading or writing. If I had more time (or interesting life) I may find more interest.
I am fascinated by the use of Twitter as a form of emergency communication. The uses cited by Evan Williams reminded me of how members of Congress were using their Blackberry devices to communicate and gather information during the September 11th attacks via text message.
As for the access to immediate feedback, it could be a good thing if a speaker/facilitator could turn that around to the audience. A Q&A session would be a good example. A participant may have a question during a long speech and could send a tweet to the speaker which could be answered at the end.
Thanks for this great video! It sounds liked you two are pretty new to twitter. I've been twittering for probably close to a year now and am thoroughly addicted. As sloperaly indicated, the literal web of connections that you make with people of similar interests grows like wildfire. Before I was even enrolled in my program at TC I was shadowing Ed Tech folks that I "met" on Twitter. To address how this digital media phenonmenon could work in education, I see it as a great way for students to research topics of interest through 1:1 interactions with "experts" on the topic. Let them create a twitter account and express interest in the topic, gathering contacts as they go. It would have to be done in a secure or monitored fashion of course but the possibilities are limitless.
ReplyDeleteThat is not to say that I don't appreciate the value of Twitter for emergency situations as EA Poole (and Evan Williams) described. I think we've heard of the story of a young man wrong imprisoned abroad who asked for help from twitter friends and was quickly released. Twitter would have been amazing to have on 9/11 - I was in the South Tower and had a pager at the time which was great until I lost signal, but it was still asynchonous. When I finally got home at about 12:30, I used AIM to reach out to family, but twitter would have reached more people much more quickly.
I'm simply saying that I think this is only one application. And I'm certainly not posting my minute-by-minute updates of my life. How boring? (I'm a digital immigrant on that front!) But, I think the answer comes from one of the docs posted on the blackboard (Twittering tips for beginners): Don't answer the question what are you doing? Treat it more like a mini-blog and post links, comments, questions that are interesting to you. Our digital native students may be more inclined to use Twitter as an extension of their personal blogs to talk about themselves but I don't see any reason why we as educators can't harness the same professional power of Twitter for educational use.
curious too if we can explore the negative aspects of Twitter. do we want it used for younger kids with cell phones? (so far no issues with this as it has a much stronger follpwing with over 25's anyway. What could be some real drawbacks to using this as an educational tool to find information (albeit) quickly?
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