Twitter on CSpan

On Saturday I watched a question-answer discussion with Evan Williams on CSpan. Williams is one of the founders of Twitter.com. Originally they called it "twttr", but as Williams jokingly said, they bought the vowels to complete the word "twitter". Biz Stone, Williams' partner, named the technology twitter because there are short burst of conversations like birds chirping. Stone said that the phones receiving the messages make the high pitched sounds like birds.

Williams is not sure the future of Twitter, but he commented on its rapid growth. He is seeing how people are networking and forming groups around interests and work related events. He noted that the biggest Twitter event was Obama's election night.

The fact that people can send one message to a group and have that message saved on a website which others can search may be why people are attracted to Twitter. A person does not have to retype the message; they can send to many followers. I have seen groups of 20 or more people.

There is a record of the twitters so people can go back and retrieve the information sent. For example, if there is a new location or time for a church meeting, book club, or political rally, the organizer can quickly twitter the group.

Cody discussed one possible advantage of twittering in the classroom setting is that students would learn to write concisely since only 140 characters are available in a twitter. I think texting has the same advantage. Since this technology is a social networking tool, I am not certain that it can be transformed into a journal response format.

I am wondering if a twitter debate might be more effective. Having an instructor tweet a controversial question, the students could take sides and discuss via their cell phones. Their tweets would be recorded for review later. I am not sure this would be an effective method, however. When making debate points, one may need to refer to authorities.

Though Twitter has been around for 3 years, I do not think its use has been fully discovered yet. I would like to read more about it before I use it in a classroom setting.