When I first heard about twitter, I thought it was ridiculous. Do I really care if one of my friends is feeling especially witty? Or wants to share that they are having fun shopping, eating jimmy johns, or doing homework? If it was that important, or had any direct effect on me, I figured one of us would pick up the phone. So, I pushed twitter off to the far side of my mind. It was categorized as “for teenagers,” “waste of time,” and “I don’t care.”
Until…I was required to make a twitter account for SMAC. I was shocked. Twitter? For educational purposes? Skeptical as I was, I went along with our professors and made a twitter account. After hearing their pitch, I could see a use for twitter in college classes, but still didn’t see a need for it in a High School. So, I pushed twitter to the side of my mind again. Then, the following week, it seemed like our whole class was twittering (tweeting?) to each other! Even people who initially shared my skeptical view were using it. It seemed to spread like wild fire.
So, maybe I was wrong. Maybe twitter isn’t just for teenagers. People seem to be having fun with it. If it’s bringing people together and helping to maintain networks, it isn’t a waste of time. I am glad I am in the twitter loop, but I still have some hesitations with it. First, I don’t know how I will be able to manage teaching, preparing lessons, navigating life in general, and keeping my blogs and twitter going. Second, I don’t really know how insightful one or two sentences on twitter can be. I am sold on blogs, but twitter is yet to be determined.
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Hold on to that healthy skepticism, Meghan. It IS interesting to see, though, the way that Twitter is being used among the cohort members, and to think about what function it is serving. Although I know that the same expectations that apply for a group of grad students cannot be expected to apply for a group of middle schoolers, it seems like there's a real need being responded to here, and that seems worthy of our attention.
ReplyDeleteAs for something like Twitter becoming something of real value on an ongoing basis, I must be honest and say that I'm not there yet either. Liz will tell you that Twitter is the best tool she's yet found to develop a professional learning network, though...getting help on matters of importance *at the moment that help is needed* Perhaps it's a matter of establishing a habit and then seeing if it justifies the time...
I have to agree that I'm not sold on twitter yet either. I wasn't happy about joining at first but now I find myself checking twitter almost as much as facebook. I guess I'm viewing this as a trial period for twitter and seeing if any utility develops. It will be interesting to see how each of us uses it by the end of the school year.
ReplyDeleteI'm also skeptical about some of this as well. My question is how much do you want to be accessible to your students outside of school? I know our days won't really end when the bell rings (papers to grade etc.), but things such as Twitter and Facebook can eat up so much more time that you'd expect. People get so caught up in checking their various accounts and messages that they lose sense of things around them.
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