Twitter: Discussion

Though I am a little embarrassed to admit it, the first “tweet” I ever made in my life was for an assignment in this class. Having said that, I am already hooked on the idea and can foresee myself continuing to use its services to keep in touch with friends and celebrities. I think class discussions via Twitter have valuable advantages over mediums such as blackboard discussion board or even in class conversation. One major advantage of Twitter is its’ accessibility. With the functionality of being able to tweet on the go from my cell phone, I can easily converse with classmates from anywhere and post updates as they happen. I think these up to the minute notifications are appealing and create interest in the discussion. Additionally, I am an advocate of the 140-character max post limitation on each tweet. I think it forces users to be “short and sweet” which will aide in keeping the interest of the readers. I think the advantage of a twitter discussion compared to one conducted in the classroom is that students have the chance to think and do some research about their responses. In my opinion, this helps to facilitate informed discussions. The big advantage I see in this is that Twitter expands the learning channel from the traditional one-to-many (Professor to students) to many-to-many (Students learning from other students). I am excited to continue tweeting with my classmates and take part in the many intellectual discussions.