The Science of Twitter
My preconceived notions of Twitter have been admittedly negative, but honestly I really had never given it a fair shot until this assignment. After spending some time familiarizing myself with this new forum, I found some really great users who had a lot to offer with respect to education. For me, as a biology instructor, Twitter is most useful almost as an RSS feed. I subscribed to users such as Sciencenewsorg, sciencechannel, and biologynews. These users would generally tweet a statement regarding current trends in biology followed by a link where one could find more information. While I could go to the respective websites of these publications and sign up for the RSS feeds for the same info, twitter provides another avenue to keep current on the information presented by each organization. Also, the ability to link these updates to your phone makes the ability to read and use this information almost immediate. I could really see myself using Twitter to present authentic examples of biology at work to my students. Unfortunately, I had a hard time finding specific individuals who were tweeting anything useful regarding Biology specifically. I am sure they sure out there, I just haven’t found them yet. For my use, Twitter is a great way to stay up to date on current issues, but I don’t really see it as a means of useful professional communication in my content area. Most of the personal tweets I found regarding Biology were from teenagers complaining about it. I think I’ll only subscribe to the major science organizations for useful tweets.
July 10th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Nothing wrong with mocking Twitter-
Many places are using it as another RSS style avenue. I think that type of use has its place. If you can find good people, actual teachers, then it takes the worth up a level or two in my opinion. I’ll keep a look out for bio people.