Despite my initial reluctance to embrace so much technology so quickly, I found the Twitter experiment to be rewarding; within a 48-hour time frame, I learned much more about my classmates than I could from simply sharing class time together. We've made connections about restaurants, favorite Halloween candy, and movies. A tip about the Lego convention from a classmate made my son's day on Sunday (he even got to buy a bulldozer kit!)
However, I also noticed that writing and reading tweets can be time-consuming: I kept wanting to check on Twitter search to see if there were more posts with the hashtag, and then I went back to see conversation threads. There were 2 followers from outside the class that I blocked because their posts were bizarre; another outside follower led me to a website: Origami Astronomy: The Art and Science of a Giant Folding Space Telescope which seemed very informative. After the 48 hours were done, it didn't seem as if many people were posting tweets, and I missed hearing about their daily lives.
With daily posts about the little things in life, we've gained an idea of how different our perspectives are: some people walk dogs, some feed babies, some hike and kayak and race, some start partying hours before the game starts. And yet all of us are hoping to become secondary teachers, and technology needs to be a part of that teaching experience.
If the cohort continues to tweet regularly, I could definitely use Twitter to call on classmates for help when something isn't clear to me. It was great to have the ability to contact the group at once. If I can convince my sisters (who live in California) to join, we could follow each others' daily ups and downs. It's hard to be so far away from my larger family, especially after a visit together when I get used to hearing their daily thoughts. Twitter would give me a way to keep that connection.
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