Twitterchats

I recently attended #edtechchat on Twitter.  The conversation focused on the benefits and drawbacks of online learning, face-to-face learning (f2f), and blended approaches.  Moderators started discussions with questions (coded Q1, Q2, etc.) and participants used their 140 characters to share their thoughts (coded A1, A2, etc.).

I have to be honest: I am not a fan of Twitter.  I had hoped this chat would change my mind, but I don't think Twitter's format lends itself to any kind of organized discussion.  Instead, it encourages a sort of free-for-all, just like a classroom with a hundred students where nobody needs to raise their hand or wait for anyone else to stop speaking.  Regardless of whether anyone actually has anything good to say, 140 characters is almost always too few to construct a meaningful response, and I always find myself completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of tweets being produced, even using the search function to sort by hashtags.

What I did take away from the conversation was a bunch of Twitter accounts worth keeping track of.  This is where Twitter really shines.  In my opinion, Twitter works best as a tool for sharing ideas in one direction at a time: a user who consistently makes interesting or useful individual posts is one to follow and learn from.  A user who participates in large-scale conversations will likely dilute their feed with posts that quickly become meaningless or impossible to understand when removed from that context.  While the appeal of the latter suffers from being difficult to follow, I think that a thoughtfully managed account of the first type can be an excellent tool for professional development.