I think it's time to tell my Twitter story, because I need to make my peace with it. Thing is, when I first heard of twitter at ULearn'07 I thought now there's a big fat waste of time. In fact, a year later at ULearn'08 I thought exactly the same thing. Then, final day, final workshop I'm sitting next to @janenicholls when she tells me she couldn't live without her twitter network. Strong statement. I think, maybe there's more to this than "I just ate the yummiest chicken tikka masala at Mr. India". So, she hooks me up and says I should get into a group. Hmmm, how do I do that? In walks ICT guru, cyber-sage @suzievesper who says, just follow a whole bunch of people and comment on their blogs. Then, to help out she puts out a plug to her twitter network saying Hey, follow @craigsteed and Yippee, some of you did - that was encouraging! OK, so from slow and humble beginnings, gradually around me develops this amazing network of educators. I now love twitter - it's not just another social network, but it's more my Personal Learning Network. That's what I love about it, thinking & learning with others. One recent example of this was when @snbeach asked four important questions about education, threw out to her network and gathered the responses to post on her blog.
This story I know is not just mine, it is mirrored on a recent post by @klandmiles and I imagine the story is similar for many of you. Criticism of Twitter has been levelled at the type of tweets that occur, that they can be inconsequential or that in situations like conferences, tweets can spiral into negative commentary, the tone of which can be influenced by intial tweets and a subsequent flow of imitative tweets - a phenomena Derek Wenmoth describes in his blog post titled Digital Lemmings. OK, agreed but like Derek I also have found my involvement with twitter on the whole to be a highly positive and valuable experience. Also, let's be realistic, we don't operate in an emotional vacuum and for me some of the more personal tweets are actually just as important as the learning tweets as they allow me to get to know some of my network. I honestly know only 4 or 5 people personally in my twitter network, so these tweets allow me to get to know my network a little better, and that's important too - it allows me to connect at emotional level with this very important bunch of educators.
So thanks twitter - I misjudged you - accept my apologies.
So thanks twitter - I misjudged you - accept my apologies.
