A few weeks ago I decided I was going to give Twitter a real try. A friend of mine in Lethbridge had decided he was going to be a Twitterer and convinced me to revive my long dormant account.

I came into it all fairly skeptically. After all, Twitter is not a forum meant for deep thought. You can type messages that are a maximum of 140 characters or about 28 words. It’s a format that lends itself to fleeting thoughts like, “Roast beef for supper,” or “My students sure worked hard today” rather than thought provoking commentary.

That said, I think I’m hooked on Twitter because I’ve discovered that it is a place where learning can occur.  Over the past few weeks I’ve managed to find  a couple of dozen educators and other people (and three NASA missions) that are all giving short, snappy updates on whatever they’re doing. These people are doing interesting things. They may not all report every day, but they’re all involved in pedagogically interesting projects. As they give updates of what they’re doing (and often links to posted projects), I’m learning and getting ideas.

Not all the people I’ve selected have worked out well. I dropped one guy who is not posting about the interesting stuff he is doing in his class (and other sources say he is doing really neat stuff), but seems to be continually posting messages (tweets) about his breakfast, returning from the airport, or other minutiae of his life. While I’m sure these are fascinating details for some people, I don’t know him and learning about his breakfast doesn’t help me learn.

That said, I’m learning to post snippets that might help other educators. Evaluating your own tweets with a view as to whether anyone might care is a bit humbling. I think I’ve said a few interesting things in the past couple of weeks, but I’m not posting a lot just because I don’t want to bore people. After all, does anyone really care what I had for breakfast? (I went to McDonald’s and had the breakfast burrito, if you do care.)

Twitter can be an opportunity to be vain or voyeuristic, but it can also unite a lot of professionals or friends and give an opportunity for learning or quickly helping others out with a problem.

I’m a fan of Twitter.