Twittering?

[Susan Carter Morgan]

Are any independent school teachers twittering? I've found the Twitter network to be helpful in providing resources, links, and contacts. scmorgan
(Great that I posted this in 2007, and it's bringing more discussion)

[Alex Ragone]

Yep, Tuesdays at 2 is the time.

[Susan Carter Morgan]

Wow, I just woke up from a nap. Can you tell from my message?
"So glad to know when you guys..."
Geesh.

[Alex Ragone]

No worries. I skim, and miss most type-os. Plus most of my writing contain lots of type-o's anyway. :-)

[Laurie Bartels]

Yippee, I can make it on the 27th! Looking forward to being there!
Cheers, Laurie

[Laurie Bartels]

I spoke too soon – have to be in Stamford, CT and then in White Plains – will have to watch after the fact :(

[Bob Irving]

I'm birv2 on twitter. I started last year great guns and was so excited about the daily stream of ideas and resources. Eventually the stream became a mighty river and I started drowning. I then pruned the list of people I followed and that has helped somewhat. However, I don't tweet as often as I would like. Part of the problem is the closed nature of the various social networking sites I frequent: Facebook, Twitter, 2 or 3 Nings, Diigo, Google Reader, and others that have some sort of social component. I don't have the time or energy to stay active on all of them as well as update my own site (www.elementalsource.com/drupal6). What I wouldn't give for some sort of open framework so that our updates were automatically disseminated to our various sites.

I love the always-on nature of collegiality and professional development, but I find it hard to keep up!

[Laurie Bartels]

Hi Bob,

Loved your last sentence re: open framework. Just the other day was saying to Fred something along those lines, and thinking about sifting through my online voices – Will I pair down? Will I allocate some for purely personal and others for purely professional? Or do I maintain a blend? Which do I "need" and which do I "like" but do not need? Meantime, feel like they each get neglected every so often!

Cheers, Laurie

[Bob Irving]

Looks like there are several initiatives to do this, including this one: http://www.opensocial.org/

It seems there's some sort of linkup there to Ning, but I haven't looked very closely at it.

My other hesitation with Ning is ownership of data. Who owns it? What if I want to get mine? What if Ning goes to a paid model, or just disappears? Perhaps that's just the price we pay for free stuff.

Sorry to divert the thread from the original Twitter topic. Twitter's a great start, but... One thing I did was update my Facebook page automatically when I posted a tweet, thinking that might at least eliminate one post. But then my non-techie FB friends couldn't understand a word I was saying. So I stopped that. One possible solution would be to have a business voice and a personal voice, but that way lies madness, methinks....

[Sister Elizabeth]

I've started using Twitter 3 different times and haven't found a reason to continue. Reading everyone's comments leads me to think I'm following the wrong people. Please could you all make suggestions of who to follow that would show me the usefulness of twitter and convince me not to delete my account again?

Sister Elizabeth
Powhatan School

[Susan Carter Morgan]

Sister Elizabeth,
It does take time...and you need to check it periodically. However, some people think they need to read all the tweets, and that's impossible. I follow a combination of English teachers, independent school people, and tech coordinators. Demetri has a list of independent school people you might want to try:
http://twitter.com/demetri/colleagues
Or this:
http://twitter.com/indyschools

I read when I have time and find gems. For example, I saw a tweet from someone asking if we knew of any science teachers who were familiar with film. I have such a person at my school. The next day, I connected them, and the teacher now has a great opportunity to do some work with PBS. I find that I get questions answered, find links to live PD opportunities, and more. But I sure don't try to read it all. I think of it as the wind, blowing in and out of my life:)
Good luck!
Susan

[Julie Simmons]

Hi Susan ~ I Twitter and I love my PLN on Twitter! I get teaching ideas daily, and I feel like I miss out on great discussion if I am away from Twitter for more than a few days. My Twitter name is BJacketsfan.

[Julie Simmons]

Great discussion on Twitter right now - Tuesday evening are #educhat discussions. Please join us!