To Twitter, or not to twitter?
The most public use of Twitter these days has been microblogging celebrities: Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears duking it out for the most followers, B- and C-Listers making every banal thought public, all kinds of celebrities saying goodbye to one of their own. But the White House and the Library of Congress are doing it, and so are an increasing number of Senators and Representatives.
Athletes, politicians, writers and more are using Twitter to send 140 characters out into the world, as many times a day as they like. But in my rounds around the teacher-tech world, it also seems like more and more teachers are hopping onto the Twitter train, both for their own use and as a classroom tool. You can find teachers by subject area, look at a twitter for teachers dictionary, follow Teachers 2.0 or join in on EdChat. Dana Huff and Jim Burke of English Companion and Ning fame are twittering, and I’m reading about other great reasons teachers should use Twitter. I’m working on a digital writing workshop project this summer, and so my thinking about Twitter may end up in the mix. I did a texting activity with Catcher in the Rye this spring, so I’m open to using Twitter in a similar way, but also I’m intrigued by the “backchannel” possibilities.
I also have some non-athlete, non-celebrity friends who use Twitter, the kind of friends who also use Foursquare and are usually on the early-adopter edge. Some of my favorite bloggers are also Twittering, and even some of my favorite writers. I like a good smart parody Twitter as much as the next culture geek.
But will I be twittering? I just don’t think so. The form itself doesn’t appeal to me as a writer–I’m still in the shallow end as far as texting goes, for that matter–but as an observer, it’s definitely intriguing for how it breaks down the public/private wall between celebrities and fans, and also how it captures real-time thinking and communicating for posterity.
Your thoughts about Twitter?
I use it a little. I might a lot more if my phone worked with it.
LSM, what do you use it for? What about it appeals to you?
I mostly use Twitter to follow sports teams, but I really like it. And, I’m much more active on Twitter since I got my fancy phone.
Hey, I didn’t even know you had a Twitter!
Well, I’m very hip, you know
@starrylkj
Clearly! I am the non-hip one here, it appears! Also, what about it do you like so much?
A colleague of mine had her students write a joint poem on Twitter. This was on the day before our mid-winter break, when student attention is mostly focused on the short vacation instead of class, so she decided to do something kind of fun to shake things up. I can’t remember all of the details; I think she had them draw numbers out of a hat, and that was the order in which they each wrote a line for the collective poem. It was essentially the 21st-century version of a 19th-century poetry parlor game, and the students enjoyed it. (And she had some other activity for the students to be doing when it wasn’t their turn to be writing a line of the poem.) Ultimately, I’m not sure it was much more than a vaguely literary way to waste a period — one that might well have been wasted anyway, so I’m not criticizing — but I don’t see myself making Twitter part of my teaching repertoire. And I can’t imagine doing it for fun; I do like Facebook and post in a regular-ish sort of way (which is to say two or three times a week), but I can’t imagine posting several times a day.
See, that’s what I want to avoid also, what gives teaching with technology a bad reputation–the form you’re using has to be organic and add something to the process or bring a new way of looking at the text or genre. Otherwise it’s just a fun new toy, that brings novelty but nothing else to the table. I think the restraint of characters works fine for poetry, but how would it work for a short story, or for an opinion piece? How could the character limit challenge students? Or how could it be written in a voice that challenges them, to make it sound authentic and still be within the restraints of the form?
Hey Jackie…not sure I have an opinion about Twitter, but this article was interesting…Tweet for Revenge.
http://www.spinner.com/2010/05/27/m-i-a-twitter-feud-new-york-times-writer-phone-number/
I think Lynn Hirshberg comes off better in that encounter than MIA does, and that is tricky to do, given Hirshberg’s history with celebrity profiles (a piece she did on Courtney Love got her investigated by Child Services). I think between Twitter and reality TV, we have come so far from the old era when movie stars and celebrities could present perfect images to the public, hiding what might have been rotten underneath. Somewhere, there are probably great dissertations being written on what that means for popular culture
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I have “twittered” and appreciated the many links I accessed via that PLN (this is the most positive thing I have found about it)…but due to this issue called time, I began to keep up with it less and less, until now I hardly check it.
Think I would get “hooked” again if I would just check it daily, for most of my “friends” on there are either in the fields of education or technology…or both.
Tammy, I think I would be similar, and I’m not sure I need another thing to check daily, you know? One of my goals this summer is to go through the pile of links and ideas I have and see what I will actually plan to use this year.
Mostly as ultra-short blogging but I also like the links I get from it.
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