1. What do you make of the personal messages that appear in a Twitter stream – ones that do not appear to be related to work, but reveal sometimes seemingly banal or trivial matters, such as what a user had for lunch or where they are going for a holiday?
Interestingly I’ve just decided to clear out all the people I’m following who aren’t either elearning or MAODE folk so I can focus on using twitter for educational purposes. When reading Engstrom’s blog it struck me why I hate facebook – you have to see all the rubbish about what games/tests people have done and what groups their in, which hides the important stuff (for me), the object being keeping in touch with people. Twitter, on the other hand, should help to go to someway to separate the wheat from the chafe, but what do we do about banal matters. I don’t think it matters actually, as the twits are so short you can skim over those ones but you don’t want to get inundated with them either. Tweetdeck is a free downloadable desktop tool that lets you send a tweet and or a facebook micro blog from one place. You can opt to where to post it, so some things I want in both places, some just to twitter and some to facebook. Not sure yet, whether I’ve cracked it we’ll see.
2. In what ways could Twitter be used for the kind of research you have been doing this week to find information on the three key issues?
No idea. I guess it’ll be like Delicious, it depends on what people choose to write as to whether you can find the information. I just typed in Twitter, Education in the search function in twitter and did find some useful posts actually so there is scope.
3. Do you think Twitter does anything different from other common forms of online communication, such as email, forums and instant messaging?
What it does is allow you to read posts made by people you wouldn’t normally be in touch with by email, forum of IM – you need to know these people already for that kind of communication. Does the key comes in not only reading someone’s tweets, but communicating with them too in order to build up a network and a bank of valuable social objects.
Has using twitter and facebook to keep up with people, eg my best friend who lives across town, stopped me from having proper heart to hearts with people. She’ll have no idea of some of the stresses I’ve been under this week or what’s really going on as in 140 characters I can’t convey it all and also don’t want the world to know. We’ll probably meet up this weekend, but because of the kids, we’ll not get round to talking about it so I won’t get my friend-support when I need it (f2f!). As many people have said here and in their blogs, it’s nice to just talk sometimes and I’m pretty sure I’m losing the skill of conversation as I do so much by typing now.
