Are you a twit?
I heard a great talk yesterday from Guido Europeaantje, an EFL teacher who is a very enthusiastic user of Twitter. His talk aimed to introduce newbies to Twitter and show them how much it can help you learn as a teacher, as you can communicate with other teachers from around the world, ask for advice and find useful links to blogs and other resources.
So, what are my feelings about Twitter? I joined in March, after attending TESOL-SPAIN, where people seemed to be buzzing about the site and it certainly opened my eyes to a wealth of information – by following like-minded people (EFL teachers mainly) and reading links which they posted, I started reading some great blogs which I may never have found otherwise.
The only disadvantage I can see, as one participant put it during Guido’s talk, is that it “might possibly be so interesting, I’ll want to be on it all the time.” It’s true that Twitter does have an addictive quality and it’s impossible to follow up every link which is posted and comment on every tweet worthy of one. You just have to set yourself some free time when you can sit down and check what’s been happening, look at what people have been saying about certain topics and know when to switch it off.
Teresa,
thank you for your very kind words about my talk at TEFL del Sur and thanks for having me there at all 🙂
Obviously I have to confess to being a twit so let me address that fear of Twitter becoming too interesting for one´s own good (a recurrent comment at the after talk drink, by the way).
In my presentation I try to draw the comparison between Twitter and a real staffroom, as you know. Well, just like we find it impossible and unnecessary to dwell in the staffroom at all times (don´t we have classes to teach? REAL work to do?), we just have to “let go” and understand that we can´t be up-to-date with everything that´s being talked about in the virtual staffrooom on Twitter, either.
…which doesn´t mean to say I´m not racing back over there now. Something interesting MUST have happened in the time it took to write this immense blog post comment…way past my usual 140 characters… 🙂
Looking forward to our next tweet-up,
Guido.
Great response, Guido. As you say – you just have to accept that things will happen while you’re away and not dwell too much on what you might be missing or feel the urge to catch up on every tweet that popped up in your absence.
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