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saved by22 people, first byGreg Noack on 2008-04-17, last byKarl Fisch on 2008-07-25

  • Those people that have lived off twitter at the expense of their aggregator, have in my opinion, traded in full meals for snack food. I like snacks as much as the next guy but understand I need more substance than that. But the good news is there’s lots to go around.
  • At its best, Twitter is a place to share a resource, a link to a new blog post, or an insight, and even a place to have a little fun. It’s a place that could be about learning. At its very worst, Twitter is a self-indulgent exercise in self-promotion and pettiness.
  • Those people that have lived off twitter at the expense of their aggregator, have in my opinion, traded in full meals for snack food.

  • You close with, “Twitter has diverted many from what is important, what should be the true goal.” I think you’re trying to turn Twitter into something much more significant than it really is. As it says on the front page of Twitter.com, “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” That’s it. To communicate and stay connected. And isn’t that what people are doing?


    I’ll be brutally honest, I think the main reason that Twitter has become so successful is BECAUSE it isn’t so highly focused on improving classroom learning, and raising test scores, and critically thinking about 21st century skills and blah blah blah. Twitter connects people to others that have similar interests and speak the same language. BUT, that doesn’t mean that the conversation has to be focused around education. Isn’t it enough to connect and chat? Since education tends to be the common thread that binds us, its natural that much of the conversation swings that way, but to say that it’s the True Goal is way off base to me.


  • Interesting post, but I felt a little chastised, and that’s unfortunate because that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid in conversations with teachers who are just starting to develop their online PLN. I tell them to go to this quirky site called twitter and send out a few tweets. I tell them to say anything at first — just try it. I don’t give them rules. I don’t say, “Use twitter only if you have something great to say, or people will resent your being there. They need to be there precisely because they don’t yet know what the conversation is. Twitter might be the hook that gets them caring about educational technology in the first place.
  • I really enjoy my Twitter relationships

  • I like the metaphor - and I use it with my students - of all these web 2.0 tools as “different trapezes.” In isolation, they’re pretty limiting. We have to be “gymnastic” with them, and swing from one to the other as whim and inspiration strike us. Here’s my favorite trapeze act of late:

    Twitter to Skype to Garageband to posted podcast on Blog to blog Comment Thread to Trackbacks ad infinitum

    You notice my entry trapeze is Twitter. You notice my exit trapeze is blog conversations. Twitter is that indispensable for me these day

  • “God kills a kitten each time you count your Twitter followers. Please, think of the kittens.”
  • his post was about what I considered to be the abuse of Twitter by certain individuals, and the second grade playground mentality of who follows who, and who is in this group, who is in that group, etc. Because you know what, its there. It is, and its not pretty.
  • We can decide what we want to read or what we do not want to read. We are big kids, right?
  • Seriously, twitter is not OURS. If people want twitter to act and be used a certain way, it’s time to step up and create/find a service that allows this. For the record, I feel the same about blogging. Prescriptions for use bog us down and stifle creativity and innovation. But what do I know, I’m just a part-time teacher
  • n a side note, your blog and the comments that are collected here are a beautiful reflection of the self-regulating aspect of social networks. Thanks for the food for thought and provocative discussion.
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