Hintonblogger

My previous post and Will Richardson's recent post about "Network Learning Practice" has fueled some thinking about how I manage the sources of learning I use. The other significant factor has been through my experimenting with a wide variety of social/learning networks that are out there. I have accounts/pages on Facebook, Linked-In, Ning (through the Classroom 2.0 ning group), and others I'm sure I've forgotten. I understand the concept of being apart of "like" groups of people or for searching out or staying in contact with people. What I have failed to "get" until now is ""Twitter". I just didn't get it, I probably still don't entirely, but there is some understanding where there wasn't any before.

When my brother, a software developer and information connoisseur, and I were discussing Twitter, his comment (which I agreed with at the time) was that it was just "noise", as in non-useful information. But now I understand that Twitter really isn't about noise, or status updates, or incessant "Tweets" about the smallest little things. It is about a dialogue with "your network", about creating a conversation and recording it in a way that attaches it to you. Plaxo Pulse is another type of this, but attached to your other "connections" online. Twitter's flexibility in the way it allows individuals and groups to interact with other in particular in conjunction with mobile phones/messaging is probably what drives it's popularity, as well as the tremendous "noise" it generates.

Basically, the way I've come to understand it is that Twitter (or Tumblr, etc) is like comments might be on blogs. "Tweets" are short (like comments typically) and they organically form into a conversation that can go in a variety of ways. The difference is that the comments get posted to our own "comment" blog (call it a micro-blog if you want) and we can add friends so that we can easily follow their comments too and these comments can be about whatever is on our mind, or happening in the moment. In some cases this allows the dialogue among friends to occur around a particular topic. Thinking of it another way, it is kind of like a mass text message to a particular group. Twitter makes this possible by allowing us to turn notifications on or off, so that we get notified when our friends are commenting on something when we want to (though we can always go back and see online what they've said).

One easy way I thought this could be used (in a non-educational setting) would be around the BYU (my alma mater) and the Utah (our archrival) football game. My friends who are BYU fans and I can all turn on notifications for our group and when something great happens then you can tweet and respond to tweets and engage in an instant conversation about it. In concept, Twitter isn't really that different than what we have had in group instant messaging chats, but what it allows is for this to happen on the web or (even more mobile) via our cell phones, get notified from only the people we want to be notified of, and then archives that on a webpage so we can always review it.

Educationally (putting aside for a moment the obvious privacy issues), it allows individuals to discuss events, ideas, homework problems instantly. The backchannel conversation (I think that is the term being bandied around) that can occur through twitter is an interesting concept. I wonder what teachers/professors would think of the "backchannel" conversations that occur in class (I'm sure there are plenty of college students that twitter from their classes). If nothing else, I see a lot of potential value in Twitter where previously I only saw noise. I still won't be "tweeting" what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow though.