Twitter Teaches Me Again

This one's not so much something I learned today, but something I re-learned with quite a specific example after having realized it a couple of years ago.

Namely, that Twitter can be such a powerful learning tool, not just because of the ideas of individual tweets, but because of the intersection of those tweets and twitterers.

Earlier this evening, I noticed a tweet from @TheGilch regarding an NPR item - it pointed out how Wordle had been used to take a look at two speeches, one from Khameini and one from Moussavi, in Iran.
I think Wordle's a neat thing, so I clicked on the link in @TheGilch's tweet, and read the full NPR post. Very interesting stuff - about Wordle, about what's going on in Iran, about Twitter.

So I retweeted @TheGilch's post.

At that point, two of my followers, @GardenGlen and @lbott, retweeted my retweet.

And @GardenGlen added the following comment:  "Great use of Wordle 4 comparisons".

I was interested because of the "neat" factor of Wordle, and the issues swirling around Iran.  To be honest, I wasn't even thinking about educational uses.  But @GardenGlen's comment was such an "aha" - Oh, holy smokes, what an AWESOME way to teach students to compare/contrast two sides of an issue, two speeches on a topic, whatever... I've talked with staff about using Wordle to let students see key themes in a piece of writing... but using TWO Wordles to compare/contrast?  Hadn't even occurred to me!

So here you have it...

• A really interesting item I saw because of a tweet from one person
• Two other people who may have also seen that same neat item because they follow me, and happened to be noticing my tweets at that particular time (I think one or both may also follow @TheGilch, but may have missed her original tweet due to timing)
• Those two people then retweeted the item out to an even broader audience - so who knows who else may have seen and thought about it?
• And one of them kicked the tweet around with an idea tying it to education and an awesome use with students... a connection that completely escaped me the first time around... but that I can't wait to share with some of our teachers.

Yes, the power of Twitter... who knew? 

I wonder if Ashton Kutcher retweets anything I could learn from?  ;)

Comments

[Peter Pappas]

I agree with your assessment of Twitter -it has been a great PLN for me.

For example - I had done a post on uses of Wordle. I was contacted by a British teacher via Twitter who asked if I wanted to contribute to a collaborative Google Doc on uses of Twitter. I did and reposted it back on my blog here. "Build Literacy Skills with Wordle" http://bit.ly/PHKgF

The power of social networking!

[Jeanette Johnson]

Thanks for the link to your post, Peter - takes my thinking to a whole new place! I'm excited to share it with teachers when they return in August.

[Aparna Vashisht-Rota]

:) I don't follow Ashton Kutcher. I am sure he has moments where we can learn from his tweets too!