Okay, having done a negative, now on to the positives of using Twitter.
The social/professional mix is intriguing. People will post links and quotes, but also comments about their hotel room. I follow Scott Leslie, D'Arcy Norman and Brian Lamb, so feel as though I was almost present at the Open Education conference. I have found some good sites through people such as Guy Kawasaki (who I am convinced never sleeps, or is in fact an artificial intelligence program). I have also used it for work, sending someone a message who I saw was online and was supposed to be in a virtual meeting with.
But I've been struggling to get my voice right. I'm happy with Facebook status updates, I get the right tone, but I'm not sure whether I should be posting social chat stuff (I'm off to the cinema), or professional stuff ('Interesting post here') or self-promotion ('New blog post'). It turns out that it's all three probably, as Chris Brogan says in this interview. As with blogging, it's taken a while but I feel as though I'm finding the affordance of the medium now.
Which leaves the question - why? Particularly if not many people are hearing what I say anyway. For me it's about the potential. Next year I would like to get all my students to sign up, so they have this constant low-level contact which is much less intrusive than IM. I think it will be an excellent back-channel around the content. I would also like to see it used institutionally - if there was an OU twitter, it would provide a great knowledge sharing and social bonding mechanism. I'm perservering then, in the hope these come to pass.
So if you're not on Twitter, give it a try, I'll follow you. And if you tried it a while ago and gave up, give it another go, we can follow each other. You can follow me here: http://twitter.com/mweller
Atonement.
Twitter doesn't let me comment there.
Posted by: AJ Cann | 29/09/2007 at 11:52 AM
Yes, Atonement it was. What a film.
Posted by: Martin | 29/09/2007 at 06:42 PM
Told you so, although much of the complexity of the book is lost. Read the book too (and read Saturday)!
http://tinyurl.com/2b9abm
Posted by: AJ Cann | 30/09/2007 at 05:21 PM
Don't know if you're already aware of the twitter-related tools mentioned in this post at Library Clips - http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2007/09/29/roundup-twitter-digest-outtwit-twiddeo-twitbacker-twitternotes/
May be useful.
I saw Atonement too the other week - best film I've seen in ages!
Posted by: stuart | 30/09/2007 at 08:37 PM
yes, I'm a big McEwan fan, I just wasn't sure of seeing it after having witnessed the debacle of Enduring Love. I thought a lot of the complexity did transfer in Atonement - I'd go as far to say as it's the best literary adaptation in recent years. Enjoyed Saturday too - making a film of that aren't they? That will be hard to adapt
Posted by: Martin | 01/10/2007 at 08:13 AM