Got Twitter? I don’t mean only in “do you have a twitter account?”. That’s the easy part. I’m referring to whether you’ve wrapped your mind around what twitter is and why it’s getting so much attention.
Twitter is best seen as a tool for staying in touch with, and aware of, others. (for a more advanced exploration of the utility of twitter see: social grooming). Or you might find this short video overview of Twitter useful.
How do you get started?
- Set up an account
- Find some people to engage with (or in Twitter language, friends). E-Learn 2008’s Twitter profile is here. My profile is here. Feel free to post your twitter profile in the comments section.
- Use hashtags (#). #elearn is our conference hashtag. It’s a useful way to connect with others who are at the conference. Use it in your tweet and others will happily find you.
- Use twitter search to explore comments on the conference, presenters, etc.
As with any technology, the proof is in the doing. Alan Levine has posted the Twitter Life Cycle that seems to resonate with many new users (i.e. starts with “this is the dumbest thing ... ends with “I can't stop!").
If you already use Twitter, what are you doing with it? Using it to stay in contact with colleagues? What about for interactions with students?
E-Learn 2008 is shaping up to a great learning experience for conference attendees and presenters. A quick look through the conference program reveals a good blend of theory, practice, research, and technology. Congrats to organizers!
One of the more substantial trends in education - and history may well render this the most substantial development in over the last century - is a growing shift to openness within education. Keynote and invited speaker addresses in this years conference will be speaking to this topic. It is, much like attention to global warming, a quiet revolution that has no clear centre, yet promises to substantially reorganize society and education in particular. This topic was a recent focus in an online course I'm co-facilitating. What is openness? What are open educational resources? What about open teaching models? Can open accreditation be far behind? It's truly and exciting time to be in education!
My particular interest in openness is how it shapes our capacity to connect with information and with others. In a networked world, inability to access either information or conversations with others is a barrier to learning. As educators in the public space, elimination of barriers to learning is an important, even ethical, responsibility. E-Learn 2008 promises to be a great forum for discussing these important educational developments.
