What do you make of the personal messages that appear in a Twitter stream – ones that do not appear to be related to work, but reveal sometimes seemingly banal or trivial matters, such as what a user had for lunch or where they are going for a holiday?
As the 'Twitter in plain English' video said the little things are sometimes what brings people together. It's horses for courses; I find it banal and trivial unless it carries some form of slant, or irony, or humour.
E.g. "I'm drinking coffee"... great, thanks, that's changed my life!
"I'm drinking coffee and I've burnt the end of my tongue"... now I'm laughing (in an empathetic manner).
In what ways could Twitter be used for the kind of research you have been doing this week to find information on the three key issues?
The use of links would seem to be the biggest possibility for sharing information. Links, basically, because there is not room to post anything of any length on Twitter.
That information can be 'tagged', and also 'retweeted' meaning that it can reach a large audience quickly and with some degree of accuracy in that audience.
Do you think Twitter does anything different from other common forms of online communication, such as email, forums and instant messaging?
Twitter is a short and snappy, synchronous/asynchronous tool for communicating. It has some advantages over other methods and some disadvantages.
Advantages:
- Instant - synchronous
- Searchable for tags
- Short messages : succinct, key message, bullet-points
- Informal
- Networked
Disadvantages:
- Instant, yes, but not as 'flexible' as Instant messengers
- Searchable for tags, yes, like Delicious, but only as good as the original tag.
- Short messages : no room to expand when required
- Informal : so are blogs where you expand your message much easier
- Networked : Unlike forums where there is a clear thread I found it hard to follow a stream when other messages were intermingled.
To my mind Twitter, or micro-blogging, is simply another method which fits the way that some people wish to operate, another choice that, potentially, students could use for educational purposes.
Does it fit my idea of an educational tool? No, not really although it has some potential it is too restrictive.
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