Twitter
“Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now” (Twitter, 2010).
Twitter allows users to post ‘tweets’ or micro posts of less than 140 characters to share with their followers. These tweets can be related to a certain topic, through the use of a #tag. Many TV shows and movies have designed their campaigns to reach the number one tweeted topic, such as the X-factor in Australia. Some famous Tweeters include Ashton Kutcher, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Oliver, Lance Armstrong, Sarah Palin and Kevin Rudd.
Advantages:
• Users can share up-to-date information such as traffic jams, sports results and tv shows with people all over the world
• By having a limit of 140 characters, Twitter forces users to reduce the amount of words used to explain, thereby removing much of the procrastination.
• “It changes classroom dynamics [in that] it can serve both as a means of analysis and an object of analysis and teachers can keep track of a conversation students carry on a particular topic” (Grosseck & Holotescu, 2008, p. 7).
Disadvantages:
• Some celebrities and politicians have accounts in their name set up by users who have no relation to them or their views.
• Twitter does not use real names, instead it assigns users a username, and therefore some users may not know who is actually following them.
• “The twittering going on in a lesson sometimes can be too distracting” (Grosseck & Holotescu, 2008, p. 8)
Stay tuned for my next post (on the learning objects page), which looks at some learning objects available for teachers.
Thanks for you readership,
Russell
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