Twitter Assignment

I still don't like Twitter. I had a Twitter account and after months of rather dull snippets of people's lives, I canceled my account. This new assignment did not improve my view of Twitter. I was in Olympia this weekend at a series of workshops for teachers which I found very informative. I was not able to elaborate since Twitter only allows 140 characters. All I could do was say I was there and enjoyed it.

I remember a couple of recent studies about Twitter. One study showed that almost half of all tweets were trivial chatter. Now, how they defined trivial, I don't know. But, most of the tweets I remember were just that. Not quite the Twitter joke of "I'm breathing." or "I'm walking, now." but close.

The other study followed the Tweets coming out of Iran during the election protests. Of all of the Tweets reporting from the protests, it turns out that most of the posts were re-post or, re-Tweets. Very few were original.

Let's face it. Twitter is a neat marketing idea. A Tweet is nothing more than a text message. With so few characters, you often need to eliminate vowels and use grammar shortcuts to cram as much information as possible. Since you can post on computers from your phone and to phones from a computer, there is no difference. Tweet just sounds so much better than txt msg.

All social networking and blog sites are, by their very nature, egocentric. They are there to tell other people what we are up to. If we really thought about it, we might wonder if anyone really cared that much. A blog does allow one to write more in depth, whereas Twitter doesn't allow much. You can't write anything in depth so posts tend to be rather shallow.

Week 1

What was the most significant thing you learned in class this week?

I'm not sure there was one significant thing that I learned in class, but I did have some ideas that I hadn't thought about in a while reinforced. I am glad that there is a class that focuses on the technological aspects of the students. The Apple IIe was the height of classroom technology when I was in school. There were no cell phones, no internet. Even though I do use these now, it will be a challenge integrating them into the classroom.

What questions do you have and what do you want to learn more about?

Nothing this week. I'm sure I will have many in the weeks to come.

What applications do you see to classroom practice based on what you learned?

There are several things I think social studies and history students could use. The internet is, of course, ideal for research. I do not think Wikipedia, or other encyclopedias, is a good source. It is a good starting place to find sources, though. I think that students keeping an online journal of their activities is a great idea. Not through Twitter, though. Something that provides for more substance like a blog or LiveJournal.