Twitter is Not Living Up to Its Potential

On Thursday I wrote about the professional development potential of Twitter.  Unfortunately, though, (just like many of my former students) Twitter isn’t quite living up to its potential right now.  I read an old blog post of Justin Tarte’s (@justintarte) the other day that made me realize that interacting with others is a crucial part of building your Twitter network.  After spending a good amount of time trying to determine exactly how to do this I came to the conclusion that asking questions was the key. 

There are two types of questions that I have tweeted since Thursday hoping to reach beyond my followers – direct (replies asking someone for information about a resource they have shared or an event or organization that they are involved in) and general (inquiries asking the followers of certain hashtags for assistance).  None of them have gotten responses. 
I understand that I am the new kid in town and that to a certain extent I have to prove myself.  However, I am baffled by the lack of responses to the direct questions considering that the network I am trying to build is one of people who are committed to improving education.  If a student raised their hand during class to ask a question, would they simply be ignored?  I am even a little taken aback by the lack of the lack of responses to the general inquiries.  I might not be asking the most profound questions, but it’s also not like I am asking for advice on the charley horse that woke me up screaming in the middle of the night.  Again, thinking about the classroom – when you first use a new piece of technology students often have non-content related questions.

So, I have decided to do an experiment of sorts.  I have three different things that I am going to try and see which (if any) will finally get me some answers:

1.  Tweet again: Max Ray (@maxmathforum) mentioned in a comment to one of my previous blog posts that there is only a 1/3 chance of any tweet being seen.   So, maybe the "teacher" isn't ignoring me, but simply didn't see that my hand was raised.  Therefore, if I don’t get a response within 48 hours I am simply going to ask again.  I wonder, though, at what point I run the risk of becoming the annoying kid because just because the person or people the question was directed at might not have seen it doesn’t mean that others didn’t.  

2.   Purposely time my tweets:  The Social Media Guide (@socialguide) says that 12:00 p.m. EST is the best time to tweet because it coincides with key daily events (beginning of the work day, lunch, and end of the work day) in three different time zones.  Dan Zarella (@danzarella) also says that people are more likely to click on links over the weekend.   I know that I favorited a number of tweets over the past two days to do just that because I wasn’t able to give them the attention that I wanted to at the time that I received them. 

3.   Tweet synchronously: I found that I had the most true interaction during last Sunday’s #21stedchat.   Others asked questions and I answered.  I asked questions and others answered.  People retweeted me and someone even favorited one of my tweets.  It seems that participating once was not enough to really impact my professional network (again, that whole proving myself thing), but I think that if I constantly interact with the same people I will see a difference.

Twitter Makes the "P" in PD Powerful, Personal, and Progressive

A 2010 Rutgers University study found that 80% of tweeters use Twitter to update others on their status or share their thoughts and observations and deemed such users “meformers”.  I’ll admit that two weeks ago this was my perception of Twitter – that it was a one-way method of conversation for Narcissists and/or people with far too much time on their hands.  In contrast, a recent Drexel University study found that only 2.5% of tweets by educators contain personal information.  Rather, as I have discovered, teachers are "informers".  You share resources, pose and respond to questions, and learn about innovative programs, technologies, practices, and research. In many ways, Twitter is a natural extension of what teachers do in the classroom – modeling the behaviors and skills you want to see in your students (information literacy, communication and collaboration, safe social networking, and lifelong learning, among others).

I recently posted a comment on Michael Pershan’s (@mpershan) Rational Expressions blog that included my view that mathematics education is more about the process than the product.  Twitter fits into this philosophy too – it transforms professional development from being a single event with a specific focus into a continual conversation with limitless possibilities.  Twitter allows educators to maintain connections with people you meet at conferences and workshops, college and graduate school classmates, and former colleagues in a way that is different than email due to its more open nature (more about this will be coming in another post) and 140-character limit.   (Sadly, I searched for over 25 such contacts and was only able to find one who has a Twitter account.)

In addition, though, Twitter also offers a way for teachers to expand your professional network.  You can choose to follow people with whom you share a specific experience, interest and/or goal (more about the mechanics of how to do this will be coming in another post) as I did with Beth Gryczewski (@Gryczewski).  The exciting part is that in doing so you often discover conversations and blogs that introduce novel topics or ideas that will make you pause to reflect and perhaps even act.  For example, Beth recommended that I join the #21stedchat Twitter chat last Sunday. (For anyone who is unfamiliar with a Twitter chat, it is simply a synchronous, public conversation held on Twitter at a designated time and threaded together with a common hashtag.  Here is a list of all of the educational chats on Twitter thanks to Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman1)).  The topic was "Professional Development for 21st Century Learning".  Participating exposed my tweets to the people interacting with me in addition to my followers and brought professional development opportunities to my attention that I most likely would have never found on my own (Internet searches tend to be most fruitful when you have something particular you are looking for).  I was unaware of the existence of #edcamps prior to the chat and now I am trying to convince The Math Forum (@themathforum) to host a math-specific one.