This week we are exploring the use of Twitter as a Web 2.0 tool. Although this is not my first rodeo when it comes to using Twitter, I found out pretty quickly that "participating" in a rodeo is a vastly different experience than "watching" a rodeo. With respect to Twitter, I have definitely been more of a "watcher" than a "participant".
I have used Twitter to passively follow tweets related to my school, my students, a professional interest or two, and an avocation or two. I have also used Twitter from within Flickr to announce the availability of image albums for my school's photo club. Beyond that, I have always had lots of modes to communicate and interact with my students and peers through the panoply of channels available via my school's Outlook suite, Google suite, and Blackboard LMS. Perhaps the availability of these applications have made me shy away from Twitter or perhaps I am a bit intimidated by Twitter; this week's adventure gave me the impetus to investigate further.
Twitter has always appeared to me as a vast stream of consciousness medium. When I have dipped my toe into that stream, I always find something interesting. This usually leads me to something useful, typically linked outside of Twitter. On the other hand, this occasionally leads me to something that becomes distracting inviting me down a rabbit hole from which I emerge, much later, far from my intended destination. Of course, Twitter is only stream of consciousness if one does not impose a structure upon it. This is where organizing applications like TweetDeck and HootSuite seem to come into play.
TweetDeck is a free web-based tool that helps with tracking, organizing, and posting to one's Twitter accounts . In TweetDeck, separate columns of activity related to one's Twitter accounts are displayed on a dashboard. The number and types of columns on the dashboard are varied and user customizable. For example, the screenshot image of my TweetDeck below shows columns I selected to show Home, Notifications, an #etec527 hashtag search, and a Science Resources list I created in Twitter. Notice that a palette of icon control buttons found in Twitter itself are readily available on the left of the dashboard.
HootSuite is a more ambitious web-based tool that not only helps manage Twitter accounts but seeks to manage all of one's social media accounts. Similar to TweetDeck, HootSuite has a highly customizable social media dashboard organizing information in various streams. With user-friendly menus, one can add accounts to HootSuite from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube, and Pinterest; all social media applications that have learned to play fairly well with each other in their overlapping space within the social media nexuses. For example, the screenshot image of my HootSuite below shows streams I selected to show My Tweets, an #etec527 hashtag search, My videos from my Youtube account, and a Science Resources list I created in Twitter. Interestingly, HootSuite has user-interfaces to perform analytics on one's social media and to schedule release of tweets through Twitter that are quite helpful and easy to use.
In playing around with TweetDeck and HootSuite, I can see the power of Twitter when it is harnessed a bit. The constant stream of information feels a bit more manageable when one has an application taking selective, focused dips out of the stream, keeping track of interactions, and scheduling events. To me, this allows one to step away from the stream for a bit without feeling like one may miss something they care about. An interesting feeling since the act of personalized, selective management effectively blinds one to the vast majority of the Twitter-verse. Still I see these tools as an approach to managing Twitter so that is more useful to me.
The next thing I have to wrestle is the notion of more actively engaging my students through Twitter. I have, used Twitter to highlight aspects of or creating a backchannel for an "event"; something I feel Twitter is particularly well suited to doing. The downside I see is, that when I have used Twitter in this mode, I can become more of an observer and a documenter of the "event" than a facilitator or participant; this seems potentially problematic for a teacher. Another worry is having students engage with Twitter, especially during class, exposes students to that vast stream of consciousness that has many, potentially more glamorous (and possibly inappropriate), bits of information flowing by that may cause the students to cease to be mentally present in the here and now with their classmates.
Still, every tool has its two "edges" ("tool" versus "weapon"); the trick is does its utility in "tool" mode compensate for its potential misuse in "weapon" mode. I can certainly see the upside of "tool" mode to communicate critical bits of information rapidly and broadly (something e-mail fails miserably at with today's cohorts of students) - highlighting sights and herding students during a field trip, pointing out some interesting developments in science, clearing up some poorly communicated class instructions, or especially noting some well deserved accolades for students, to name just a few, I can even see the potential of addressing the downsides of "weapon" mode as opportunities to help students become more discerning, more self-disciplined, or generally better social media citizens. In my mind, I can visualize how these uses would be helpful as a supplement to my teaching in support of, but decidedly tangential to, my students' class time.
While I like the idea of possibly using Twitter as a backchannel during class time to draw out those students who have difficulty joining discourse in the classroom (for a host of reasons) and to facilitate social interactions about the focus of the class time, the concern about becoming merely an "observer or documenter" of events or loosing the engagement of my students on the focus of the class time to other distractions on Twitter looms large. Perhaps the next evolution of my teaching is how to move toward more of an "observer-documenter" role because my students have become self-actualized learners, or perhaps my class time needs to evolve to be on the same footing with the "events" that my class time competes with whether I promote Twitter in my classroom or not. Clearly, this brief Twitter adventure has left me with much to ponder.
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