Tuesday 15 December 2009

Twitter, Take Two


It took me so long to fully digest the benefits of Twitter. At first, it was hard for me to sift through all the tweets and make sense of what was pertinent to my own learning. So I took a break from it and thought it was simply a tool that wasn't for me.

Enter the lovely Lesley Edwards who oh-so-gently posted about the benefits of Twitter every now and then (smart move to not just do it once, Lesley!), which was just enough to get me thinking about diving back in.

And dive back in I have, and I can now truly say that I am loving Twitter. Why the change? Well, I've narrowed down my field of who I follow to librarians and tech teachers and just a few extras for good measure. In essence, now I'm learning from the people I wish were in the same room as me many times. It feels a bit like that feeling of sitting across from someone while working and one of you says, "Wow! you should check this out. Let me send you the link." Whether you choose to tweet or just be a lurker on Twitter, there is enough great stuff being shared out there that it's worth the leap.

One more reason Twitter is better for me is having a Tweetdeck. This is a site that arranges the new tweets to come up all the time on your computer screen (kind of like a ping for an email) so I'm not actually going to the twitter website.

And if there is anyone wanting to get Twitter a try, I found this little nugget on Twitter today from Librareanne out of Tokyo: a list of librarians on Twitter. I just added a bunch to my account. Plus, you can't beat how cute the Twitter bird is. I've added a "Follow Me" button on the side. Jump on in the Twitter pool!

3 comments:

MrsE said...

Glad to have you back in the Twitter fold, lovely post!

Colleen said...

I've gone back and forth with Twitter. I really don't want to hear about the delicious cup of coffee someone just drank. I have found really great resources via Twitter, but it was like finding a diamond in a haystack and I didn't have the patience for it. I need to narrow my list of who I follow. Maybe I'll follow who you follow since you've already done all the work! Do you mind? I'll get my Tweetdeck going again and give it another shot.

IMC Guy said...

Do you know how people get added to the list of librarians on Twitter? That's a great resource, thanks for sharing.