Rethinking Learning
conversations about the future of teaching and learning
Barbara Bray
be creative, innovate, take risks, unlearn to learn
Oakland, CA

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Is Twitter making Blogging Obsolete?
By Barbara Bray    June 27, 2009 -- 11:16 AM

Are more people coming to your blog via Twitter? Twitter is more of a conversation aggregator. Disqus.com aggregates a connected stream of twitter conversations about your blog post.

I am trying to follow the conversations about this session at EduBlogger Con 09 about Twitter vs Blogging. I’m going to come back and try to make the conversations flow smoother.

Why do you blog? What are you trying to flush out (beginning - middle and end)? You can do this with a blog where with a twitter gets people to learn about your blog. 140 characters is just not enough to reflect on your blog. Twitter actually speeds up the conversation. The life cycle of a blog post is shortened to more of a ustream. Timing is everything.

When you release information is more important  - 3pm Eastern time according to Jeff Utecht who is in an International School in Bangkok.

Conversations are more real time with Twitter where blogging used to be more of a reflection of what others might have posted - linked. Now twitter audience is very differently diverse based on your content. They are picking up content from their own angle. Twitter can revise old content from past blogs from different audiences, different perspectives.

How do you revise old content on your blog?

Start a feature post (Scott McLeod) to revise old posts. Related posts  (jeff). Comments - wp recent comments Zemanta  (
zemanta.com) will give you a list of related to improve the way you blog and write emails and works with Flickr.

Jeff is setting up a Twitter account that uses Twitter as an aggregator so whenever a student blogs with specific keywords. Create a twitter account or edmondo. Find a way to hook the tools together. Use Twitter to update everything you post.

Power of a link!! That’s what the web is all about. (Jeff)

Teaching kids how to master the online landscape. (McLeod)

xml google sites - keeps a site index of your site updated on google - follow conversations on a specific topics.

Friendsfeed - if you blog, it automatically makes your post viral into Facebook and Twitter. Lifestream takes all the sites and RSS feeds into one solid stream.

(Rushton) Staying up with all of this information. Why are you bothering to do all of this at all? Sharing information is valuable.

Joyce Valenza - kids need to use Twitter as a research tool. Trying to pull together the search tools. Twitter is becoming more mainstream so students will be able to find the researchers or scientist they are looking for. When they saw the Iraq story evolve, they got it.

(Jeff) To get a weather update - put in google "Weather, Twitter" so you can get the weather report from cities all over the world. This allows students to link geography with real data.

What is your value add to the community? Things are being addressed in new ways where contributions are making the difference. Requires a full level of commitment. Just because students (or teaachers) are participating, this is a different level of responsibility. This is a kind of voice (someone reading the posts). We have a whole workforce that have not contributed - how does it feel to be brave enough or take the risk to put something global that could

Blog posts start off with a screen capture of a Twitter. Put a clustr map on the blog for students. Students check daily to see they have an audience. This doesnot minimize their classroom audience.

If you are going to have a voice, then students will not start a flame war. We talk about appropriate use and digital citizenship. We don’t talk about empowered use (Scott). The people that master this landscape will be empowered and will win.

How many are using Facebook with kids? Jeff uses FB with his Rugby team, clubs. Liz Davis referred to Dana Boyd who blogged about students not using Twitter. They use FB and MySpace because they only want to connect with their real friends. Students really don’t want to use all of the tools. Jakes said that their students don’t want teachers in their space.

Need to be intentional and have a purpose - matching the tool to the purpose. Using all the tools at your disposal. Creating experiences in the classroom to try managing realtime management, trying to simultaneously use wikis, sharing and collaboration online.

Students can see through the tools and want the activity to be authentic - and no why they should be using the tool. There has to be an engagement What are they going to get out of this? Kids can see that this is another assignment - many assignments are artificial.

Who cares? What’s not dying is writing. (Warlick) Texting is writing. They don’t care about the tool. Education has to get over the tools and get back to the idea that they are communicating.

Not everyone should be blogging. A few years ago we were forcing everyone to blog. Now blogging is changing. Blogher

Are you setting teachers up with Twitter accounts or del.icio.us accounts as the aggregator tool instead of RSS feeds? (Jakes) Then what you are doing is moving your teachers into their own PLN -Second step (Leightz) showed them how to set up their iGoogle page.

Teachers are looking for a place like Classroom 2.0 or My eCoach to see what it is like to be in a community. A little taste before you set up Twitters or del.icio.us accounts. Some are joining Twibes with others with similar interests. The sustainment factor is overwhelming - so hand-holding and finding a place where they can get a taste.

Some teachers like to have a personal connection with the people they are communicating with - then maybe it can work.

What do people do with social media? Groundswell (book) based on age and gender there are 5-6 stages of social media. Those people that are younger are very much creators.


Categories: "Edublogger Con 09" "Ebc09" "Aggregator" "Stream" "Blog" "Twitter"



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