In defence of Twitter for informal learning
“What’s the point?”, “Who cares?”, “Why do I want to know what you had for breakfast anyway?” So often I hear these retorts in conversations about Twitter.
For those who are unfamiliar with Twitter - this is the service that enables the sending and receiving of short messages of less than 140 characters called tweets. Friends, colleagues, or simply those who are interested, can choose to read your tweets, and you can choose to read theirs. You can also choose to follow the tweets of strangers.
Even as I write this description of the Twitter service, I am aware that it all sounds rather banal. And if you’d told me a year ago that now I’d be writing in defence of Twitter, I certainly wouldn’t have believed you. However, there are two basic rules to understanding Twitter: 1. You have to give it time, and 2. You have to follow the ‘right’ people. Only then will you begin to comprehend the true value of Twitter as an informal learning tool.
1. You have to give it time
I signed up for a Twitter account in May 2008. Yet, by this time last year (August 2008) I’d only tweeted once. I was still cutting my Twitter teeth by following others, and like everyone else I know, those others were a small number of friends, acquaintances and, of course, Stephen Fry! And if you’d asked me then what I thought of Twitter, I’d almost certainly have retorted with one of the three phrases that opened this blog entry! Then I began to follow TimOReilly (that’s Tim O’Reilly, who coined the phrase web 2.0) and my mind was changed...
2. You have to follow the ‘right’ people
A prolific Twitterer, O’Reilly tweets perspectives on social media, collaborative working, and, most significantly, he links to interesting articles, research and news on web 2.0. Shortly afterwards, I found GrahamBM - this is Graham Brown Martin, the organiser of the game-based learning conference in London. Graham’s tweets have offered me many new insights on game-based learning (some of which I shared during Epic’s internal game-based learning week back in April). And now I follow all kinds of people who contribute to my learning, my thinking and my professional development (and by extension, to that of my colleagues at Epic too), among them:
C4lpt (Jane Hart, Social Media and Learning Consultant);
eLearning 3.0 (BlogEdutainment, mLearning, Social Learning and the future of eLearning); and
Oque (David Anderson, who describes himself as an e-learning designer who never uses a big word where a diminutive one will suffice!)
Almost a year on since my Twitter revelation, and now I wouldn’t be without it. Tweets are delivered directly to my phone, allowing me to make good use of all the small gaps in my day, be it waiting for a kettle to boil, a meeting to begin, or a train to arrive. And I’ve discovered that there’s definitely nothing banal about Twitter – it’s simply like all those other technologies: while it may or may not be the best designed tool for learning, in the end it is the way that the tool is used which can really make the difference.
5 more twitterers I learn from:
ruskin147 (Rory Cellan-Jones, The BBC's technology correspondent);
MarcusduSautoy (Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University);
DirDigEng (UK Government Director of Digital Engagement, Andrew Stott);
Tedtalks (the official tweets of the Technology, Entertainment, Design, conference);
LearnAnything (learn how to do something new everyday!)
Do you use Twitter for learning too? Please feel free to comment below.
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