I've had a Twitter account for about a year and never tweeted once until last week, so I am definitely a newcomer to the Twitterverse. When I started my Twitter account my intent was to use it as a professional development tool. I never followed through on that because of the overwhelming sense of chaos I felt as I looked at my feed. There's just so much STUFF piling in all the time. It seemed impossible to keep up with it all. And to be honest, I was (and probably still am) put off by some of the linguistic doomsday prophets who warn of the dangers of reducing discourse to 140-character spurts.
After using Twitter a little more concertedly this week, I'm still overwhelmed by the inexorable march of tweets streaming across my feed. However, I've seen some of the advantages of the 140-character limit--for one thing, it's a lot harder for people to dominate conversations the way they can on Facebook. You'll never see anyone write TLDR in response to a tweet. I've also seen what Justin Lanier (writing on the MTBoS blog linked above) calls the "funny combo of synchronous and asynchronous communication" that happens on Twitter.
Probably the best part of Twitter (and weirdest, for me) is the ability to follow and even tweet at people whose work you admire. There are blogs I've read for a while written by gurus in my field, and I can send a tweet their way just like that! Nothing stops me! I don't have to track down an email address and carefully craft an introductory letter hoping that I can disguise my inner fanboy enough to sound like a competent professional, all so I can maybe hear back from someone I look up to. I can just tweet them! And on their side of things, they don't have to worry about 1,000-word emails from fans. One hundred and forty characters, max.
In summary, I'll continue using Twitter, but I don't know if it will be a go-to tool for me.
Hi Ryan,
ReplyDeleteI was so overwhelmed by all the tweets when I started a little over a year ago, and still am at times. My advice is to start tweeting with a few people, and then slowly join in other conversations. Also, I don't worry about trying to read every single tweet that shows up in my feed, it takes the pressure off.
Good luck!
Heather
For me, the strength of twitter professionally comes from topic chats #alg2chat Monday 9pm EST, #Statschat Thursday 9pm EST, #Precalcchat Thursday 9pm EST. In addition, it is frequently also possible, if you are discriminating in your choice of whom to follow, to strike up in prompt to topic chats on topics which are puzzling you
ReplyDeleteI don't manage to get on twitter every evening. Just too busy, but I can frequently carve out time on the nights when I know a chat I want to make is happening.
Scott Hills @Planting_ideas
Planting-Ideas.blogspot.com
We have very similar experiences, and I shouldn't be surprised since we're working on Mission #2 when Mission #3 has been released--sort of like the student who is doing his homework a day late. Anyway, I completely agree with you, and I find the asynchronous communication a bit tough to unravel without going back through all my old tweets. What I really need is a system, whereby I only check twitter a certain time every day or week or whatever. It's just too hard to tackle, otherwise. As we all like to believe, there's enough time to do the things we choose to do.
ReplyDeleteSandra @sandrasoupmaker
http://allrealnumbers.edublogs.org/
Hi Ryan, thanks for your great blog post.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there is too much stuff and indeed for the first few months I didn't even bother to log back in after creating an account. Thankfully a teacher at a feeder primary school got me to see the educational side of it and I've not looked back since and MTBoS has just taken my usual interaction to a whole new level. As you say it may not be your/our go to tool but it is a tool that we practitioners can have in our teacher toolkit. Thanks for sharing :-)
@JemmaPDuck
http://jemmapduck.wordpress.com/
Hi Ryan,
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the post, I hope you keep at it. For me the charm of Twitter is it keeps going on without me. I can hop on the train when I have time and enjoy the conversation, participate if I have something to say. Often weeks may go by with no time to get on Twitter but there are really no expectations of me. I do not read every post that has happened in the weeks I missed. I have found if something great is happening in the math world it will be shared again and eventually I will hear about it.
I am the exact same way! I had my twitter account for an entire year before this mission and I hadn't tweeted once. I had a blast working through those mini missions and agree that it is super neat to see big names in the field of mathematical pedagogy having conversations that I can follow AND participate it. Super cool!
ReplyDelete