Twitter Story

It began with cautious baby steps last semester. Dr. Grace Lin wanted her ETEC442 to use Twitter for extra credit (for us) and for an experiement (for her). I couldn't understand why anyone would want to aimlessly broadcast the minutiae of his/her life in 140 words. But with a little guidance from Dr. Lin, I soon came to understand the value of Twitter. The "group chat" for the class was helpful and by following the right twitters I was kept up-to-date on the news, technology, and eduation. I soon started tweeting and re-tweeting about helpful tools I came across or interesting articles I'd read. It was nice to know that I could share the knowledge rather than just keeping it all for myself. Of course, the tweeting was even better when I got responses from Dr. Lin or other classmates. I even felt a little sad when the Twitter experiment was over, but forgot about it as life got busy.

The last ETEC 647 assignment, to microblog using Twitter while attending the TCC 2011 conference, was a chance to appreciate Twitter in a different way. For ETEC 442, we tweeted whenever and about whatever. This time our focus was narrow: pre-determined time period, topic, and group of people to follow. Looking back, I think I would not have gottten as much out of the online conference if it hadn't been accompanied by the microblogging activities in the background. I enjoyed the learning so much more because I knew that there were others who were also learning and sharing at the same time. I enjoyed the "meaningful information" as well as the casual conversations that were being exchanged. It was like going to a conference with a group of friends! (Lest you think that I'm a social creature -- I'm not; but maybe I am a social learner.)

I have been using TweetDeck (a third party Twitter interface) for a while and find it a lot more friendly and helpful than the Twitter page itself. Here's a screenshot of the full screen TweetDeck (you can reduce it to any number of columns you want).

Notice the circled buttons under the message window? TweetDeck has great features like "Auto URL shortening: on," language translation, and frequently used hashtags.

Here's one funny story: When I was adding "Mentions" column a few days ago, I noticed that someone had mentioned me as a provider of news on Augmented Reality (see the far right column). So I scanned @Perugini's tweets and links, and determined that he likes to keep up with AR developments. So I followed him. Guess what -- now I'm getting a number of tweets in Italian and I have no idea what they say! :) But his English tweets are useful.

I also added #edtech in 2nd column of TweetDeck to see what I would get. Lots of helpful links to Ed Tech information, but almost too much! I now know how to keep up with information and technology if I want to. IF I want to. Sometimes too much of a good thing can be too much. Maybe I should just stick with my selected group of friends. :)