My first real experience of twitter was an #edchat (is # a
vowel or a consonant?) a week or two ago. Topic: How do we know when our students are
engaged. What was it like? It was like a cocktail party. Every comment short and maybe sweet. It takes a little work to condense a thought
into 140 characters. With #edchat the
action is fast and furious. If it takes a few minutes to compose a retweet,
decide what of the original to include, etc.
during that time you’ll have missed a lot. I was totally lost – I couldn’t figure out
whether to retweet, or reply, what hash tag(s) to put on it. So I basically lurked after the first 15
minutes. But I guess that’s the
idea. I guess it’s meant to be like a
cocktail party. Maybe participate in a
few conversations, maybe learn a few things.
There’s one thing that really annoyed me – I started paying
attention about a half hour before the session began, when there were not so
many tweets coming through and I was able to follow a lot more. The percentage of tweets that had a link to a
blog site that required registration to read the entire post was high – and I
know that on the internet e-mail addresses are like currency. I also found at least one person who seemed
to have an automated tweet with #edchat going on that led to a site hawking his
products. That kind of thing turns me
off in a big way.
Today I learned how to block and report spam, but am I
willing to use that function? Let’s
see. I looked in a little while ago and
saw a very interesting tweet in #edcaht. Followed the link to the ASCD website to read
a blog post about “7 myths about rigor”.
At the end of the post I was directed to learn how to conquer those
myths ------- by purchasing a book from their bookstore. Blatant spam.
But no report from me. Because,
hey, they’ve got a .org domain. That
means it’s a non-profit, right? They’re
only trying to help, right? I don’t
know. Maybe. Does the end justify the means?
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