"Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as poor man's email systems. Twitter's success is wonderful and it shows you that there are many, many ways to communicate."
~Eric Schmidt, Google CEO's verdict on Twitter
Okay, so after class on Friday, my opinions on Twitter have changed slightly. I still don't like it as a personal, spill-my-guts-to-the-world-in-140-characters-or-less social networking site. But for professional reasons, I can definitely see how a teacher can learn a lot from other teachers. It's a great way to follow people from around the world and learn new teaching tactics and techniques.
To my college friends who have found me on Twitter and are now following me, please don't be offended that I'm not following you as well. In my opinion, that's what Facebook (and texting, emailing, and calling) is for, so my Twitter account is going to be strictly professional.
I think it will still be difficult to avoid all the pointless rambling on Twitter, but I'm going to do my best to only follow people that I can actually learn from. A 2009 study showed that most tweets (77%) are "Pointless Babble" or "Conversational." The tweets I'm interested in, "Pass-along Value" and "News," add up to only 13%. Maybe these numbers have changed over the past two years (I hope they have!), because I'm sorry, but I don't want to know what you had for dinner or why he dumped you after dating for only two months. If you really want to tell me about that stuff, call me.
So, Twitter, thus far you have redeemed yourself in my eyes. We shall see if you will continue to intrigue me over the next several months.
"Suddenly, it seems as though all the world's a-twitter."
~Newsweek
It's interesting how Twitter is known for, and according to your graph is mostly comprised of, pointless details, but its usefulness seems to be found squarely in the professional realm. Maybe Twitter should try some new marketing strategies?
ReplyDeleteWow - that pie chart surprises me. You are showing off your skills at finding interesting stuff to share - thanks!
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Caitlin. Friday's presentation did change my opinion on Twitter slightly, but I think its extremely important that we don't co-mingle our professional and personal lives. I applaud you for only following people you can learn from! I've been pretty against Twitter from the beginning, but maybe if I can try to keep your perspective of it as a learning tool in mind I'll be more open to it and hopefully even benefit from it.
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