I haven’t twittered much recently in the last week or so.  To be honest I have been lurking around but I’ve been suffering from a media induced confidence failure.  On Tuesday, BBC Breakfast suggested that people who tweet or communicate online are lacking a sense of  identity and have to justify their existence by staying in continual contact with people they know only electronically.  Their expert guest suggested that letting people know you are still alive was the real reason for persistently updating any social networking site and that this filled a personal companionship void.   The discussion continued with the old arguments that users were disconnected from reality and were promoting a short attention span in a new generation of young people.

My first reaction was outrage - how dare anyone suggest that I have no life away from my laptop.  I object to most of these points – I thought “I have a strong sense of self identity- I frequently assess my strengths and weaknesses and evaluate my teaching practice to make it better, I have strong opinions on many issues and know when to keep them to myself, I have strong morals which I can verbalise well even if I can’t stick to them – but it’s not my will power that’s in question here.” …

The possible exception to my indignation is that I do indeed have a short attention span but that has been the case since I was a child – long before the birth of twitter, but not long after the internet first reared it’s first URL.

As usual my emotions are working faster than my rationale can keep up.  Once I calmed down and began to consider these insults more clearly I realised that my initial reaction led me to question my own motivation for logging on.  

My network on Twitter doesn’t need to know how I scored at the golf on Saturday – only I care!  (And possibly my Dad who probably wishes I would improve before the mixed competitions this summer.)

But they might want to know that I had a successful lesson today because I used a fabulous online resource that I stumbled across last night.

This is because on Twitter I have built up not a group of random friends who play the same passive game or have reviewed the same movie as me but a Personal Learning Network.  This is much more than a random collection of people with a similar interest, it is a group of people that that I follow and talk with who offer me valuable opinions, pick me up when it’s not going well and give me a hearty pat on the back when something does.

Twitter is a place for me to share ideas, contribute to discussion, help like-minded colleagues and to learn.  Margaret Vass blogged recently to suggest that answers to questions came quicker from a PLN than from searching through hundreds of google search results and I agree, although I wouldn’t know who Mary was if we didn’t tweet.

This site, branded ‘social networking’ and therefore banned under most internet workplace policies, is a fantastic forum for discussion.  Nowhere else online can I get instant responses to issues and opinions.  If I throw an idea out to the Twitter world I get a wide reaching response almost guaranteed to expose the weaknesses of any argument.

On a daily basis I also get to hear about other’s successes and failures with techniques, technology and teaching.

I don’t have to wax lyrical here about why Twitter is so addictive and popular – if you’re not sure, just google it.  It has already found a place in education; Tom Barrett among many others has written about the positive contribution that Twitter can make to the classroom.  (Thanks to Twitter’s @valleyboyrich for giving me a link to the original page on Mark Warner’s Ideas to Inspire website.)  Commercially you can reach thousands of potential customers and hardly a week goes by without the Breakfast team passing comment.

So how do I feel about this 3 days on?  Well, like my blog, if people don’t want to hear what I have to say they can opt out but I do hope everyone in my current PLN can bear with me – I’m sure there are some pearls inside me somewhere just waiting to be farmed.  I will probably continue to express surplus information about my day to day life; sometime people find it interesting.  I will continue to articulate my opinions because every voice has a place in discussion.  I will stop worrying about what other people think!

“A common interest initially brought us together but it is a growing friendship that will keep us together.”  I wish this was a famous quote but it isn’t.

I do hope it stays true though.

4 Comments

• 

  By fearghal, May 9, 2009 @ 9:39 am

  An interesting reflection on the use of twitter. I share many of these thoughts…

  Oh, I’m pretty sure it’s Margaret Vass…?
• 

  By admin, May 9, 2009 @ 10:26 am

  Thanks Fearghal – Sorry Margaret!
  Must stop publishing late at night – far too keen to hit that button!
• 

  By Margaret V, May 9, 2009 @ 12:54 pm

  Ha ha – no worries – Mary’s my middle name, actually

  I can relate to everything you’ve said in your post. I first signed up to Twitter out of curiosity but didn’t really see the point. I think it first clicked when I was at a family gathering and happened to mention I had a twitter account to a distant relative. It turned out that he had one, too, but joined for different reasons. He has his own business and had heard that joining twitter was a good way to promote it. He explained that through twitter there was the opportunity to show the real person behind the business. By posting little personal comments as well as comments about the business, followers were able to build up a kind of whole round picture of the company and the people who own it. I’m not sure if this makes any sense the way I’m describing it here, but when he explained it to me, the penny suddenly dropped….having said all that, I still do (like you) have the ocassional doubts about why anyone would care about what I get up to in my personal life

  I didn’t see the programme you mentioned in your post, but I certainly don’t see those who I follow as lacking a sense of identity – quite the reverse. And as for the bit about being disconnected from reality, twitter has helped me to do the opposite. It’s given me the opportunity to learn about the realness of what’s going on in education today.

  Phew …. couldn’t have said all that in twitter
• 

  By Robert Jones, May 9, 2009 @ 1:24 pm

  You’re not really going to listen to the opinion of “experts” who clearly have no understanding of Twitter, are you? It’s ridiculous – might as well say that people who shy away from social networking sites are on autistic spectrum!

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