Twitter May Need a NECC Brace

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Chris Pirillo - Culture Must Change Itself

How did I find this? Through following Chris on Twitter.

In education we discuss the echo chamber, preaching to the choir, and why others don't "get it."
It's not just in education...it's everywhere.

Favorite thoughts - paraphrased

• We have to educate people to know that the Internet is about connecting people, whether online or in person. This is not a bad thing, but too many people think it is.
• Often times we have to find like-minded people in places away from where we live.
  

Why We Twitter

Will writes about his "concern" of Twitterialization.  Twitter is a "strange yet somehow important little tool," says Will.  Agreed.  I also understand Will's concern about the depth of conversation and thought.  Perhaps Twitter is not about the depth of conversation of the professional opportunities.  It is, ironically, much deeper than that.

Twitter
Tell the story
In a hundred forty
Characters (or less if you're good)
Useless?

I created a Twitter account last Spring.  Played for a day or two.  I didn't get it.  I read about how Twitter was the topic of the NECC edubloggers cafe.  I tried, I really did, to get into the power of Twitter.  Again, I didn't get it. 

There is a chicken/egg debate in the use of Twitter.  Do you have to have a network before Twitter exposes its power or is the power of Twitter that you can build your network?  Hmmm.  The ones who  discussed how great Twitter is had their network of followers through other means.  Twitter seemed to make it easier for them to keep in touch.  As it has evolved, it is a place to highlight new tools, backchannel conferences, share seed ideas, and other things.

In late November, I decided to hop back on the Twitter brigade, and tweeted so.  Within a day I received a direct message from Sylvia Martinez wondering if I was giving it another try.  I responded and said yes.  I jumped into the Twitter pages of a few educators, followed them, and a few followed back.  I dropped a few tweets, and people responded.  Cool.  In a way, better than a comment on a blog post...why?  It is more immediate.

So I have come to this temporary conclusion:  Please indulge the analogy, and at the end I'll clarify.  Babies cry to get attention.  The quicker the attention, the more appeased the child, but the more frequently the child cries.  Response to the cry makes the baby feel loved.  Twitter operates the same way.  We cry out into the wilderness, when someone @replies we feel accepted, loved if you will.  The more people respond, the more we cry.  CLARIFICATION - I am not saying those of us who tweet are babies.  I am saying Twitter gives us a feeling of belonging, of being accepted, of being loved.

A few weekends ago, during the Packer/Giants game, I sent out a tweet saying something like "No one wants to win this game."  Stephen Rahn and Sylvia Martinez responded.  As I sat in my living room alone, my sons were out with their girlfriends and my wife does not usually watch sports, I felt I was watching the game with friends.  I have never met Stephen or Sylvia, yet we had an immediate conversation after nearly every play near the end of the 4th quarter and overtime.  It was fun.  It was great.  Thanks for playing along.

I get Twitter now.  It connects us, plain and simple.  Whether it is what you are eating, what you're linking, what you're doing...it really doesn't matter.  It's like real f2f life; sometimes we discuss important issues, and other times we discuss the movies we saw over the weekend.  Web 1.0 did not allow this kind of connection.  Web 2.0 does.  Twitter does it instantly.  Get it?  When you tweet and someone tweets back, your existence is validated...you are loved.  Be sure to love someone back.

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Oh What A Web We Weave

Okay, I'm admitting this post will get very little editing. So many things have "hit me" within just a few hours, and I've been thinking about why school matters, it it does in the traditional sense, and in trying to separate myself from thinking for a while, here's what happens.

Young son (19) comes home last night and says, "Dad you gotta see the professor on the MIT site. He's a physics prof, but he's cool...and old...but funny in a good way...kinda like the Einstein picture with his tongue out." So we watch Dr. Lewin for a while, through iTunes.

A few minutes later I'm floating through Twitter and see someone link to an article on 71-year-old Professor Lewin - http://tinyurl.com/2syhzb

Coincidence?

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While I'm in Twitterdom, I follow Clay Burrel, and he is an angry young man -- in a great way. "He is so starting his own school." He has a conversation throughout my evening with Sylvia Martinez and others. They begin talking about Papert (another MIT guy I believe) who was a Piaget protege, and constructivism proponent.

I had just finished reading some information from Piaget three days ago, and Papert's work was mentioned as further reading material.

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This morning, I decide it is time to check on Sir Ken Robinson's progress on "Epiphanies," a book he promised in his 2006 TED Talk. As I'm checking, I get a Twitter update that Sir Ken's website is now functioning. Weird.

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A few minutes later, I get to thinking about Will Richardson's all-time-great post (IMO) about how his kids don't need to go to college to get the education they need, nor do any of us. I'm really, really trying to accept this concept. Honestly, I can, but I don't know if employers can...yet. So I watch all of the MIT, DUKE, U of Wisconsin undergrad classes. It's like an audit, at best, in the minds of people who still have the view that the college from which you graduated really means anything.

I'm the guy who believes that most employers don't care where you graduated college, but rather that you did graduate. Graduation from most institutions proves to an employer that if you can put up with the garbage in college, you can probably handle in garbage from the business world. But can they, will they, make the leap to acceptance of an audited education?

Then, I decide I will try to blog something. I go into Blogger and I notice the Blog List of 10 you should see. Usually these are a waste of time, but I decide to see what topic are big at Blogger now. Why? Based on Clay Burrel's comment about how bad educators are at making networks outside our arena. So I click the first one...It has Buenos Aires in the title, so I expect a travel site, or something. As it loads, I notice it is Sexy Spanish Club in Buenos Aires. Yikes, I don't have time for this...THEN KAPOW...

I'm an American writer, researcher, teacher and mother of four college students. I'm currently living in beautiful Buenos Aires, Argentina where I'm busy writing a book about creative education...

Her name is Mary Frost. She is writing a book titled: The World Is Your Campus: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands On Tuition, and Get An Outrageously Relevant Global Education.

She has another site dedicated to her writing, called The World Is Your Campus. Good stuff.

What is all this telling me? My wife says, "It's telling you to get away from your computer and go grocery shopping. Let's go already. Tell you're playmates you'll be back later." Reality.

C'mon Twitter - This is a couple times a day

I think I remember why I left Twitter

When Twitter was making a buzz among edubloggers a little over a year ago I decided to give it a try. After about a week I left with better things to do. For a year I have read about how Twitter has changed the lives of so many people. The networking, the conference blogging, the connectivism, the great taste of Kool-Aid.

I've had a week to play again. I decided it was time to give Twitter another look. Here's my issue with Twitter...IT'S DOWN TOO OFTEN! When I first started I thought it must be because it was new. But a year later it is apparently no more reliable. I have tried to get on for nearly 6 hours today, but it is down. I don't get it on several levels I guess.

iPhone Use - November 28, 2007

iPhone Use - November 20, 2007