Journal #5: Twitter

I have been a member of Twitter for about a year but have not used it very regularly.  I also had never considered its use for education before now.  I found the article 35 Interesting ways to use Twitter in the Classroom was interesting for uses I had never considered.

My personal experience with Twitter has not been particularly useful.  I find it difficult to find actual people I know unless I know their handle.  I do follow a number of people though and find that it can be useful to find news and links to interesting articles.  I think if I was more active I might find more I am interested in.

As far as learning, I think that after reading the articles Twitter can be very useful.  It seems like this brings information to the student in a format that they are already active in.   This can stimulate interactivity and participation in the class.  Students that might not post to class boards elsewhere online may be more inclined to do so on Twitter.  I do think that this would have more limited use in adult education however.

Q1: If I was try following Twitter tags to attempt to learn a skill, would I find it effective?

A1: I did follow some hashtags for various subjects related to the program in order to get some new ideas.  I kept an eye on photoshop tags and dslr tags since I am also in the video production class.  I did not find it particularly helpful though.  In fact, I found it to be distracting.  I wouldn't say nothing interesting came through the feed, just nothing that was immediately relevant.  I do like Twitter for getting exposure to some interesting links and finding news stories from journalists I follow, but not for learning anything specific.  In a classroom setting I do see its value, but for my personal learning, not so much.

Q2: Does Twitterfall help to organize my feed?

A1: I did like the concept of Twitterfall.  It is cool to type in tags a watch stuff roll by in a different window while I'm doing something.  Twitter and Twitterfall are fun and interesting at times.  To be honest though I find probably 75% of tweets to be either uninteresting or self-promotional.  I also find that you have certain members who just post too much.  I'll have to look at how to filter that out.  In all the most interesting tweets I found to be from blogs I was already familiar with and am a fan of.