But, Twitter doesn’t work that way for me!

I’ve asked any number of questions and gotten no answers at all. When I direct message, I sometimes get answers, but not always. Of course, when they are people I really know (f2f) I get a response.

So, does Twitter work for the masses? It sure works for the “names.” People who have more fully developed online personas than mine get good responses. I’m not sure when I’ll hit the tipping point, but what is the likelihood that most classroom teachers ever will? The kind of attention and dedication seem to me that it will be unlikely to see this become a great tool for most.

I would have a hard time selling/convincing teachers to invest their scarce time in this tool for much of a payoff. I’ll keep at it though.

Great questions….let me see if I can put this into words.

I’m definitely a newbie to the Twitter thing, but I’m not sure how comfortable I feel about being “aggregated” if in fact that is what is happening.

That is exactly what is happening. When you create an account you “follow” other people. You aggregate their information, or in other words you follow what they have to say you want to know what they know, what they are talking about and when people follow you they are doing the same.

Wikipedia defines aggregator this way:

aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.

That is exactly what twitter is. It takes the thoughts of your followers (human) and put them into one nice location for you to read. So twitter is the aggregation of all those followers. Now I take that one step further and do not only read my human knowledge but use it. I ask my followers questions, respond to them, interact with them. That’s what makes Twitter different from an RSS reader. It allows you to interact with the aggregated information.

How do I explain this to teachers? To those that will listen I talk about the ability to connect to other educators. You decide if you want 100 or 10 who they are and what they do. I usually compare it to Facebook (which many educators understand) and talk about how Facebook allows you to connect to “friends” Twitter allows you to connect to educators. When you need them, when you want them.

This network building takes a significant time investment and is not automatic.

Yes it does, but any network takes time to build and your network is only as good as the time you spend creating it. I didn’t start with 1000 people. I started with a couple and what I have found is when others reply to you on twitter their followers wonder who you are and then begin to follow you. But you have to be active in the network to grow a network.

From my perspective folks new to Twitter should be prepared to endure some high levels of fragmented conversation, mundane tweets, and pure blather for an extended period of time to begin to reap the benefits you describe…even if they do randomly select a few followers from your pool.

Maybe…depends who you follow and again you need to grow your network. Follow a couple of people see who they are replying to and then follow those replies and see who and what you find. Again it takes time to grow your network. If you’re not willing to put in the time then, well, you don’t get the benefits.

I’m interested in what you have to say here about Twitter being a “human aggregator” and while I think I understand what you mean, the language stirs up images of conveyor belts and sausage makers for me. I’m definitely a newbie to the Twitter thing, but I’m not sure how comfortable I feel about being “aggregated” if in fact that is what is happening. I guess the language works for the early adopter / edtech set, but I always wonder about the need for translation. If I pitched the value of participating in “human aggregation” to faculty I work with I’d get eye-rolling and perhaps more visceral responses. I think there are huge marketing challenges in introducing these emerging technologies and practices…any thoughts on another way to talk about it?

I also think the way you suggest for folks to get involved is helpful. At the same time, I think you reap the benefit of having a huge network of 1000 people who follow you and want to respond to your updates and requests…you appear to be a bit of a maven in this regard. This network building takes a significant time investment and is not automatic.

From my perspective folks new to Twitter should be prepared to endure some high levels of fragmented conversation, mundane tweets, and pure blather for an extended period of time to begin to reap the benefits you describe…even if they do randomly select a few followers from your pool.