Twitter: From Cynic to Addict?

Cynic >>>> Addict? Well maybe not just yet but I’m certainly further to the right than I once was. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about Twitter later so this is a mid-term report if you like, as part of my role as “web2.0 filter” as one colleague recently referred to me!

I started using Twitter about a month ago. For those who are already lost, twitter is blogging on a very small scale (140 characters per post) and you can follow other twitterers of your choice in a single stream of posts like this. The 7 things you need to know about twitter (PDF) from Educause will tell you more.

Now there is a lot of irreverent stuff as you’d expect but I have found it very useful. I’ll give more examples later but for now, a simple one of resource discovery. When I joined Twitter I started following Martin Weller as I read his blog. While browsing those he follows I came across Grainne Conole who I’ve met but don’t really know… we are both ex-Uni of North London. A tweet from Grainne took me to her blog where I then came across this post which I then blogged about. Now of course I might have gotten to the ENTICE guide through another route but it was twitter that brought me there in this case.

As I said more to follow but Martin Weller is already ahead of my game with his Twitter Tales and also thanks to Sonja for this post on filtering the news.

Coincidently, though the medium of actually talking to someone, I came across the following new video from Mike Wesch yesterday. For me it’s not as slick and engaging as his earlier ones but it shows how he has used Twitter in a ‘world simulation’ with his students at Kansas State university.

Reader Comments

  1. I’m afraid that I failed to keep up with the Wesch video – am I too old? I guess the overall point is clear but I think I’d like to watch a shorter clip at a slower speed.

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