Twittering a network

So Phil Macoun,  in his recent comment on this blog, recommended I give Twitter another try in response to my commenting that I didn’t really get it. So I’m doing so, a full-on commitment to twitter for a month and see how it goes. Already you’ll notice the twitter widget in the sidebar. To date I’ve found 41 people worth following (including Barack Obama along with 135,841 other followers) and 27 people are following me. That’s not a bad start to a network, but in the end it really depends on what I learn, contribute and gain from it all.  As my real interest here is in how it could possibly be of help to overworked classroom teachers, the vote is definitely still out.

Claire Thompson, one of my new contacts from KnowSchools, has tweeted me already to check that I’ve got some system set up for managing all the tweets.  Of course, I don’t as yet but she’s pointed me in a good direction and so I’ve just downloaded Flock. I’ll give that a try. If social networking is the way to go, and Flock is better designed to support that, it is certainly worth checking out.

Watch for an update or, better still, follow along with this little experiment on twitter.

7 thoughts on “Twittering a network

  1. Hi Betty,
    I’m glad you’re giving yourself a month to really give Twitter a go. It took me a few false starts before I really ‘got’ Twitter. It’s amazing all the on the fly learning that you can do, as well as helping to build your Personal Learning Network. I look forward to hearing what you think after a month–good luck!

  2. Thanks you two for all of the help and encouragement here. Yes, I can say that after this first 24 or 36 hours, I’m having fun. It hasn’t taken up too much time and it is certainly giving me all kinds of pro-d activities. Already this morning I’ve got up with Brian Lamb’s latest post, which then lead me to Scott Leslie’s previous post Planning to share versus just sharing. Whew, a whirlwind of reading but all so thought provoking. Generally great stuff.

    I loved the Ning discussion too on Twitter. It is well worth reading. Thanks for pointing me to it Phil.

    As to the search option being down, the way to find people on twitter is to type in http://twitter.com/username, where the user name is who you want. So I am http://twitter.com/bgilgoff. You’ll be able to find me though without that as I did manage to find you and so am now one of your many devoted followers. 🙂

  3. Ok Betty, I’ve taken up the challenge. Since I’ve been following you around the Net like a devoted chihuahua I might as well attempt the Twitter thing too. 😀 I’m very happy you have shared how to find people without the search option as I have been stuck there. Wrote two “tweets” about nothing. Still do not see the point of this! 😀

  4. That’s great Cindy. You and I can do this together! I too started with wondering about the purpose of it all but so far, all of 50 some odd hours later, I’m finding it quite intriguing. A very different kind of connection to people than IM which I’ve always found so invasive because you have to reply. I tend to use my email as a to do list and so staying connected to all the people I’d like to follow via email also just gives me more to do. With Twitter, I am feeling very connected but in an interesting way. I can watch (follow), look into tweets that are interesting and ignore the rest. Flock works really well for that.

  5. Was interested to read what the Twitter challenge was so followed the link from Cindy’s blog to your blog. You might find My Quick Start Tips to New Twitters useful.

    Personally I like to use a desktop application so am now using Twhirl which I’ve changed the settings so it slowly loads tweets onto the bottom left hand side of my desktop. (In Twhirl settings click on Notify and change enquence notifications > time to display 10 seconds). Unlike Claire I’m not a great fan of Flock — it’s all about working out what what works best for you.

    Best of luck with both twittering and blogging.