I am still having a hard time getting into the swing of Twitter and "Tweeting", however I am aware that this can be used as a lot more that just posting to your followers what you plan on doing for the day. I can see how one could just get caught up in the celebrity gossip and news tweets and just use this as more of a socializing tool, things like this get addicting especially when people start to update every 5 minutes! I can also see how this could be a great networking tool for companies and people sharing ideas for certain professions or interests. If Twitter is being used on more of a professional level, I can see this being quite helpful to pass along ideas, thoughts and other helpful tools or websites.
I think can kind of see how Twitter can be used in a classroom setting, though I think one of the "knock off" sites that are similar might work a little better. I could see how if a teacher were trying to integrate Twitter in the classroom, it becoming more of a distraction. However, if the students had either a seperate account for the classroom or the teacher was using a different site, this might damper this problem. The teacher would be able to use this to possibly update the students on homework assignments, or even direct them towards helpful websites. I also think that the site we used the other day in our classroom used for poll taking or voting was a very helpful tool.
I know that there are also ways to join into some sort of discussion room at specific times. I think that this would be helpful for both in a classroom setting or in a professional matter. I am looking forward to looking into this a bit more and participating in one myself.
I think that when it comes to twitter usage the good points outweigh the distractions, especially when used outside of the classroom. For example I cant tell you the number of times growing up I would have love a tweet from the teacher saying "don't forget the test tomorrow", or "if your having trouble with the homework, check out this site that explains it a different way" or something along those lines.
ReplyDeleteI am with you on this- I think. I am having trouble getting into twitter as well. Personally I rarely update my facebook status or for that matter I rarely check my facebook. so, for me tweeting seems kind of pointless. I don't exactly know how Twitter fits into my PLN.
ReplyDeleteThe participation/ discussions do seem like they would be benficail and be more of an asset to PLN's.