Joe 2.0 and the Twitter Adventure

Do you tweet?

Is that a personal question?

Before my current graduate school class, I had a twitter account. I had made a couple of tweets, but mostly I used twitter to follow people and topics of interest to me. I never looked at twitter as a technology tool for education. Nor had I ever used twitter as a means of communication for social interaction. I never thought of twitter as a Web 2.0 tool.

         This past week I have been on a twitter adventure with my entire class. I now have more articles about teaching and technology in the classroom than I will EVER find the time to read! I have added several educational writers and speakers to my list of folks to follow and I actually had my very first personal communication on twitter! I never knew you could actually have a conversation with one person on twitter. I always thought that twitter was a way to post something for your followers to read and hopefully, they will re-tweet to their followers, and then soon your words of wisdom become a trend and instantly you are famous in cyberspace!

         I guess I have always looked at twitter as a tool for the rich and famous to manage fan clubs and make outrageous comments to keep themselves in the news. I know it has been used extensively in the Arab Spring uprising a few years ago and has been instrumental in the rise of “flash mobs” to make YouTube sensations but I never realized how twitter could impact my life as a student or as an educator. My wife has been at teacher in service conferences that have made use of twitter to post back channel discussions, to poll the audience or answer questions. This was my first exposure to twitter outside of being a tool for the rich and famous. This past week has been a very enlightening experience for me. Twitter has more uses than I could have ever imagined and I saw online this week that twitter is adding a new feature that allows the broadcast of live events through twitter as well.

         I have recently downloaded a few apps that my Professor had recommended that worked with twitter, Hootsuite, Everypost, and Zite. My wife asked me to join her on Waze, and I already had Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts that all play nicely with twitter. I have discovered that several other apps I have on my phone have twitter links as well. I have a Bible app, BrainyQuote, Dictionary, and The Weather Channel all on my phone and all have twitter links.

My Twitter Adventure has only just begun!

See ya in class,

Joe