Are you a Twit?

I'm back at the Chritsa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Nashua, NH. One of the 1st sessions I attended was David Warlick's 'The Art & Technique of Wikis', and he couldn't stop talking about Twitter.

If you use Twitter, you're a Twit (this, I take some issue with), and if you're twittering (what you're doing when you're on Twitter), then you're Tweeting. It's a concept much like blogging, but you're limited to 140 characters; thus, it has been dubbed micro-blogging. Jeff Whipple , my new techno pal, says it has taken over his blogging. He now tweets more than he blogs; although I believe he does a nice job maintaing his blog. Twitter operates much like a chat room would, which may make some of you raise your eyebrows, but have faith. It seems to be a marvelous way to reach a global audience, and it works in real time. As David was teaching us about wikis, he had his Twitter account open, and he would ask questions to his networked group of professional & personal friends who were Tweeting, getting near immediate responses to the questions he was asking.

In his next session, 'Cultivating a Personal Learning Network', he addressed Twitter again as a means to grow as an educator, to literally build your personal and professional network to learn and, well, yes, grow. You can follow people, and then follow people that other people follow to build your network. If I were to try this, I'd follow David & Jeff, since I now know them to be professionals with whom I want to stay in contact. David made the good point that since you're limited to the number of characters you can enter per post, you must be economical with your words; thus, certain 'big' terms are probably worth checking out, if many people are using this term/idea. People send out new sites or ideas they've discovered or are interested in to anyone who is Tweeting at the time, and presto, you can have a new idea to check out and try.

There is also a feature that allows you to visualize data in various forms, and as David pointed out in his Keynote address on Tuesday morning, data visualization is becoming a medium. Tweeting may sound time consuming, or just another thing to do, but if you're already online with some kind of social networking tool, this may be the latest and greatest way to stay in touch & learn. Give it a try!