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For two years now, Jane Hart's collation of the Top 100 Tools for Learning has had Twitter in the number 1 spot. And any number of "learning technology" people will tell you it's their most important tool.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I just don't get it.
Twitter is a micro-sharing website - which means I can share a statement containing a maximum of 140 characters. That statement can contain links to other sites, plain words, links to other people (known as @mentions) and links to topics (known as hash tags or #tags).
Topics are created organically. A group of people agrees to use a particular #tag and then make sure each of their posts contain that tag.
Users can "follow" other people and see everything they're posting, or they can follow particular #tags. They can use either the Twitter website to do this, or any number of desktop or mobile applications - many of which allow you to be quite sophisticated in how you organise what you follow. (eg. Tweetdeck).
Twitter users have developed a number of abbreviations, which have now become adopted into the way the system works. For example, RT means ReTweet - ie. you are taking someone's post and pushing it out to the people that follow you.
The two characteristics of Twitter are:
- Posts can only be 140 characters long
- Posts appear as a stream. If you're not watching at the time a post appears, you'll probably miss it unless it gets retweeted later.
To my mind, Twitter is great for those quick "around the watercooler" conversations. Those ones that happen by chance, when you're in the same time and place as someone else (although with Twitter it relies on one person initially posting something that might be of interest to their followers - they've got no idea of who might be listening at the time - so it's a slightly different situation to a face-to-face conversation).
It's also great for pre-planned conversations, that are fixed to a particular time, and usually led by someone who asks a short series of questions. These questions often stimulate further discussion.
As a learning tool, Twitter does have some uses. But it has some serious disadvantages too:
- conversations can get very frustrating due to the 140 character limit. Many's the time when I've given up on a debate just because I couldn't say what I needed to in the space available.
- it's a synchronous tool. If I'm not on Twitter at the right time I will miss what's being said. This has the side-effect of making Twitter (like Facebook) a highly addictive activity.
- finding a Tweet (a Twitter post) at a later date is nigh on impossible. Google doesn't help - because Tweets are so ephemeral, and no-one links to them, they are rarely, if ever, picked up by the Google search algorithm.
The Alternative?
I learn from the people around me, whether in the office, or from my wider network around the world. They are my personal subject matter experts. It's important to me that I keep up-to-date with thinking in my field (whatever that might be today!)
But I don't have the time or inclination to keep an eye out on Twitter for posts from each particular person. And, with each post being so short, they don't usually contain enough meat for me to get a real idea for what that person is trying to say.
So, my professional network takes two forms:
- People who think through what they're trying to say and present those thoughts through a piece of work that's taken some effort to produce. It might be a few paragraphs in a blog, or a video, or an infographic. The key thing is that those works sit in my RSS Reader until such a time as I'm ready to use them. At which point I can mark them as read, tag them for filing, make notes on them, or send them to an email address.
- People who I'm connected with on LinkedIn. Then, if I need to find someone to answer a question, I've usually got a very good idea of who is the best person. Unlike Twitter, which gives you very little space to tell anything about who you are.
Now, there may be people that have got to this article through the auto-tweet that my blog makes. That's great. I'm really pleased you happened to be using Twitter at the same time as the auto-tweet came through. But, if you were away from Twitter and didn't have any other means of being notified about the article, then you would have missed it.
When I started blogging, in pre-Twitter days, there wasn't a place to quickly share odd links to stuff, so I put them on my blog. Gradually though, these were replaced by longer articles like this one - far more useful to me (as they help me to crystallise my own thinking), and, I hope, far more useful to the few people that followed the blog.
With the wholesale move of learning professionals to Twitter, I think we've lost out a lot of the practice of learning - which is about research, analysis, synthesis and depth of conversation - stuff that you just can't do in 140 characters.
I'm still part of the froth and bubble that is Twitter - it provides a useful insight into what people are thinking about at that particular moment in time, and is an easy place to share links to things that might be of interest to others. But to name it my number one learning tool? No. I don't think so.
9 comments
Here’s why it works for me (though I’m not sure I’d ever say it’s the ‘best’).
My son has a lot of Lego. And he can’t find the pieces. So me and his mum thought about putting together a special box to put all the pieces in.
When we were thinking about it, though, we realised that for every new compartment there would be a cost.
If every single piece had its own box, then my son would have to be able to imagine what the final model looked like before looking for the piece. He wouldn’t be able to rummage through the pile and identify the right (or even ‘a’ right) piece without having a picture of it in his head.
Lego storage, then, is about finding the right balance between mess and order. If you’re an expert in Lego construction then, by all means, stick everything in nicely labelled boxes. But I think the number of people who can construct Lego models from imagination (without rummaging) is vanishingly small.
Same goes for a lot of stuff. A lot. It definitely goes for pretty much everything that falls into the ‘working with humans’ category. Or design.
When I’m working on something new (when I need to learn) I’m often in a similar position to my son. I don’t know what I don’t know and I’m not sure what the right question is - I can’t formulate a well-structured question on The Google, for instance.
Twitter allows me to rummage through a pile of stuff broken down into very small pieces.
It’s the never-ending, constant deconstruction of ‘knowledge’ that works so well for me. Of course, you need research, analysis, synthesis and all the rest. That goes without saying.
But that needs to be continually eroded and broken down into chunks for it to be useful.
Then there’s the fact that a lot of people are working in environments where there simply isn’t any established ‘research’ or where the cost of carrying out any serious study is disproportionate.
Etc.
Thanks for your thought provoking post.
I am not entirely sure but I think that the ranking of 1 is mainly due to so many people consistently having it as one of their top ten. I certainly have it very high on my top ten (actually number 1 to be honest) due to the amount of interesting content that I would have not previously found (like this post)
The secret is to not follow too many people and being particular about who you follow!
All methods of gleaning information and trying to stay current are inherently flawed usually due to time constraints! Choosing a smaller number of worthwhile people to follow or using lists more efficiently, seem like good options for my small brain!
Thanks again @rolfek
Hi Mark, Thanks for this very interesting and thought provoking blog. While I can agree with most of your thinking I would add that the amount of learning that can be gleaned from the Twitter rather depends on how it is used. I follow links and ideas from my Twitter PLN on a regular basis to update my own learning all the time. I use these ideas in my own teaching so that my students get the benefit of this learning. I also encourage my students to use Twitter (or Twitter type platforms) during my teaching so that they can comment on or critique what I am saying or doing as I work. My research has shown that students feel that their learning is enhanced in this way because they are then learning from each other as well as from me. Twitter is providing us with a community of learning giving opportunities both inside and outside of the classroom environment that did not previously exist. I would go as far as saying that the use of Twitter has completely changed the way I teach and also how students learn in my sessions. I even have an ‘outstanding, innovative teaching award’ (from the student body) to prove it. So yes, for me and my students Twitter is definitely a wonderful learning tool.
Thanks for the comments so far.
@Simon: I understand the rummaging concept, but find it difficult to see how it applies to Twitter? If you take the analogy further it would be like only having access to the most recently acquired Lego pieces, with the rest consigned to a vast dustbin. Or have you got a better way of using Twitter than I’ve come across?
@rolfek: I agree about the difficulties of remaining current. That’s why I prefer blogs & RSS to Twitter as it lets me view things on my own terms (asynchronously) rather than having to watch rolling news coverage.
@Jane: I’m not sure I agree with your statement: “Twitter is providing us with a community of learning giving opportunities both inside and outside of the classroom environment that did not previously exist.” Before Twitter there were lots of ways of having a community of learning (Blogs and forums/bulletin boards being the main ones) . What Twitter has done is make it a lot easier to post to your community, and made it a consumer-friendly communication method. I still would question how much deep comment and critique can be encapsulated in 140 characters?
I think it is precisely the ‘ease of use’ that you acknowledge Mark, which means that more students will engage with the platform. The restricted number of characters allowed means that students find it far less intimidating to use than the other more traditional methods that you describe. Students are happy to share ideas, previous learning, related experiences or clarify the terminology being used for the benefit of other learners in the room via twitter. In this way they become active participants in their learning rather than passive listeners. Students following the lectures at home via Skype can also contribute to the twitter backchannels that are being used. We can use other forums to discuss lecture materials after the lecture but limiting students to 140 characters seems to be less distracting when I want students to listen to me at the same time as making their contributions. Data I collected at the end of the last academic year showed that the vast majority of students felt that the use of the platform had definitely helped to improve their learning by giving them some ownership of what was happening in the session. Twitter gives my students a ‘voice’ with which they can ask questions and address misconceptions. When allowed to use the platform anonymously, less confident members of the class feel happy to participate in ways that they might not otherwise have done. The very ‘honest’ feedback that they give me also enables me to better meet the needs of the learners that I work with while I am actually teaching as I follow the backchannel while I work. I wont pretend that this is easy, far from it, but I do for the most part have an active ‘community of learning’ going on in my sessions. I honestly feel that I have twitter to thank for this.
Very interesting thoughts Mark. And some of your responses have sparked further thought.
Twitter is up there in my list of used tools, but for learning. No I don’t think so.
You say little I disagree with, however you make too little a point of the importance of the water cooler! I too give up sometimes as 140 chr is just too short. And I can’t do or understand the shrt frm of wrds. Lol
I am conducting research based on behavioural change from conversation my latest blog http://www.lasher.co.uk has a link to survey. This is about the power of conversation and whether Twitter is a part of that conversation or not.
For me though the industry we are in is about changing behaviour to get efficient results and Twitter is so inefficient because we get led to things we do not need right now, which fill our space and distract our important efficient thoughts.
I just wish Twitter would thread better, this would create the conversations we need to learn.
Neil
@Jane: Yes, I can see how Twitter’s working for you, as a support for your teaching. Everything you say makes sense. The constraints of Twitter actually work towards active participation rather than against it in your case.
@Neil: The watercooler is important, but I’d like to see who is standing around the watercooler before I start up a conversation. Otherwise I’ll just start up something in a vacuum, not knowing if I’ll get a reply (as happened to me yesterday).
@Mark - Yes, it appears I have :-)
Actually though, here’s how I use it that I think is probably different to you (NB different, not better) - I follow way more people than you do across four different accounts (Hypergogue is the one you know, but I also have a Games account, a personal/geeky/web dev account and one for Marketing/Biz Dev types).
When you follow that many people the redundancy (some call it noise, I guess) is staggering. But, so far, I’ve found that for virtually every project I’ve been working on, somebody has been talking about what I want to ‘learn’.
I don’t really understand all the people who periodically announce they are culling followers to cut down the noise - it’s the noise I’m after.
@Simon - that’s a radically different approach to many people. So, how do you find that nugget of information when you need it? I’m assuming you’re not regularly just watching the stream come in?
