Blog #8: Twitter.....

Hello,

I just finished watching ‘twitter in plain English’ on youtube. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o). My first impression of twitter from the youtube video is that it seemed a lot like the ‘status updates’ portion of facebook accounts. The twitter page also reminded me of an ‘msn’ messenger sort of page where instead of posting to someone specifically, user postings are made public to all ones twitter friends.

Twitter is a free website designed for user’s to socially interact on a more ‘small-talk’ level of friendship. It allows users to post short messages about themselves and what they are currently doing. From these posts I feel that whoever is interested may post back and forth with the original poster. Once you sign up for a twitter account then you can search twitter for friends who also have established twitter accounts.

This website seems very beneficial to those who live ‘on-the-go’ and want to keep track of everyday details about the ones they know and care about. I see this website being more for users who have cell phones, ipods, etc, who can post short messages while walking or resting. I am not sure if I would use this twitter from a home computer. I guess I’m not that outgoing and/or social and would therefore feel kind of strange posting something like ‘I just ate dinner’ or ‘I’m now going to bed.’ On the other hand if I was out doing something away from my home I may be more inclined to twitter something like ‘I just saw a really great concert.’
I’m not sure of a possible educational use for twitter with students but it could definitely be fun with other staff members. Since the program requires people to be ‘friends’ I don’t think it would be appropriate with students. With staff members twitter could definitely be used to break the ice with new staff or to get reacquainted with old staff at the beginning of the school year in September. At the first staff pro-d day we could spend 20-30 minutes adding each other as friends on twitter and posting short messages about current feelings or things other teachers participated in over the summer break. I think this would bridge a lot of similarities between staff in a more relaxed environment.

So I visited twitter.com and signed up for a free account. My user account can be found at the following website link: http://twitter.com/#!/waylonsmithand I posted a few ‘tweets’ just to check if it worked. I also added a picture of my vintage bike to my profile space. It seems like a pretty neat site. During the registration process I was prompted to add some bands to ‘follow’ on twitter. I found a few bands that I enjoy and chose to follow them. In twitter language, the command to ‘follow’ means to add that person/band/thing/ etc to your account so that when there are updates for these items, then you are made aware of the changes. I have yet to find any friends on the twitter site. The twitter site only allowed me to search limited sites for friends. Since most of my friends are located facebook, I couldn’t find any of them directly on twitter. Therefore my new goal is to find some of my friends/relatives/etc who are on twitter and add them to my fiends list.
Twitter seems very hip and I look forward to using it more in the future. Thanks and good night.
-Regen