Using Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and blogging website that allows a user to make a post up to 140 characters long, similar to the length of a text message. This website is used by many to post what they are up to or things that they have found of interest to them. I have in the past tried to stay away from websites such as twitter because, if I got too into it, I could see it consuming my life. Twitter also makes it convenient to post by allowing users to post via text message from their phone, so the user is always able to access their profile to post. Personally, I could use this to see what friends are up to or if I wanted to keep up on Hollywood drama. Professionally, I can follow educationally relevant users to see new information that they share. With my students, I am not so sure I would want to use this with them. I do not believe I want them to know this much about my life and in return I do not want to know this much about theirs. However, I could see the use of the 140 character maximum in reading and summarizing materials. Many students do not know how to summarize so the small space would require them to pick out the most important information and not copy word for word from a book. So, while I enjoy the idea I do not know if I would specifically want to use the Twitter website. Twitter does have an educational website, www.twiducate.com that works in the same way that would be more teacher user friendly in my opinion, but there isn't the same easy access to it.