Thing 5 Microblogesphere

Facebook and Twitter

I am familiar with Facebook. I use it to keep in touch with friends and relatives who I have a hard time getting to see on a regular basis. It is fun to see photos and witness my friends and family share their opinions and andecdotes.

Twitter and I just met, though. After doing some one-way twittering and looking for people to follow, I can see why it is a useful tool. I was able to find several educational twitters/tweets..I need to work on the vernacular. I am seeing that PR is getting cheaper and easier. I find it interesting that twitter (as well as facebook) can be graded. "What Twitter Grader is trying to measure is the power, reach and authority of a twitter account. In other words, when you tweet, what kind of an impact does it have?" Is this a pyramid scheme? Teehee. Here is a link to The State of the Twittersphere.

After reading Cool Cat Teacher's post about Twitter, I am stuck thinking about her thoughts. She wrote, "I think this whole thing should serve as a wake up call to those watching education everywhere that there is a growing grassroots efforts of educators around the world that are bypassing bureaucracy, textbook companies, and governments and connecting their classrooms and learning spaces." I too see the value in these connections.

I know that I will use twitter as a professional development/planning tool, but I won't be allowing kids to tweet on their own. I have had people trying to get me to look at their "photos" if you know what I mean. CREEPY. I do like that you can post tweets to a blog and have a feed of updates. This is indeed a faster way to update a blog.