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September 25, 2009

Twitter, Yet Again

Back in the spring I posted about why I was giving up my Twitter account and was contacted by Josh Cohen at Teacher Magazine for an interview.


He was interested at the time because everyone he'd talked to thought Twitter was about the best personal learning/networking tool ever in the history of everness. Ever.

So he was obviously curious with what I had to say. Now that others have dropped their accounts, maybe it's not as big a deal as it once was. I also think Josh may have been sampling from a shallow pool. He was browsing the web for teachers with Twitter accounts and of course most of the names he came up with were people with popular blogs who obviously embrace online life and social networking. As I talk to teachers at my school, most of them don't blog or use Twitter or even read many blogs or do very much online other than e-mail and shopping. This is the first year that I have heard them talk about one social media tool: Facebook. So maybe Josh should do an article on teachers and Facebook instead (maybe he or someone has, I haven't read the whole issue yet). If more everyday classroom teachers are embracing it, perhaps that would be a better personal networking tool to promote?

I don't have a problem with these tools and agree that it's important--especially for media specialists--to be aware of them and know what's useful about them. There are many great ways to search Twitter for breaking news even if you don't have an account.

But the simple fact is: Twitter just isn't for everyone.

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On a side note, I want to mention the anonymous thing. When I started this blog, I was a little twitchy about putting my name on it because my school was going through a spate of book challenges and I wanted to be free to express my opinion on, well, anything without causing issues for my school or district. Josh respected that by quoting me by name, but not mentioning the name of this blog. I'm more comfortable now with the blog and my own opinions and most of my blogging buddies know my name so that original apprehension is slowly fading.

So hi, my name is Jim Randolph. Nice to meet you, if we haven't already. Pull up a beanbag chair and a Grape Nehi, stick around and join in.