Three (That's right 3!) Things You May Not Know About Twitter

Either you love it, you hate it or you don't quite understand what all the fuss is about. Twitter is for some as divisive as discussing religion or politics around the table at Thanksgiving.

140 character bursts of text. Tweets. Followers. Following. Twitter has become a facet of the technological landscape over the last five years and its purpose for education and otherwise is still a bit nebulous, so here are the top three things that you may not know about Twitter.


Photo credit: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

1. Twitter was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams

According to an article in Wired magazine, these three Silicone Valley entrepreneurs founded what was originally called Twttr. The first tweet, according to the Twitter archives, was "inviting co-workers." Even back then, the concept of Twitter was not widely embraced as useful. Since then, Twitter has "also been credited with accelerating revolutions, spawning new forms of literature, acting as a real-time water cooler for the sharing of MST3k-type snark during shared experiences like the Oscars, and generally acting as humanity’s de facto discovery and early warning system for … everything" according to John Abell of Wired Magazine.

2. Lady Gaga has the most followers on Twitter with over 12 million followers

Celebrities and politicians have developed large followings on Twitter which has created a greater sense of connection between fans and constituents and those they follow. Presence on Twitter, however, can be a mixed blessing for celebrities, politicians and others who have tweeted thoughts and images that were ill timed or not thought out.




3. Twitter DOES had educational value

While the primary function of Twitter may seem to be mindless entertainment or at least an excess of seemingly useless information, Twitter can be used as a tool in the classroom.

Possible uses of Twitter in the classroom include:

• History/Current Events/Politics: Students could use Twitter to follow major political figures and/or to participate in political activism. Teachers could encourage students to ask questions of politicians that the class follows via Twitter. The one caveat to this would be that teachers should perhaps be cautious of what politicians they choose to follow in light of the Rep. Anthony Weiner Twitter scandal.
  

• English: Twitter has emerged in the last few years as a potential device for a new mode of storytelling. Various authors have emerged on Twitter utilizing fictitious personas to create works of "Twitterature." An example of this is the story telling that occurred from the person who took on the escaped cobra from the Bronx zoo to tell a satirical story of the snake's various adventures in New York City. Twitter could, then, be used by students as a vehicle for storytelling.
  

• Science/Technology: Students in a science could follow major figures in the scientific community and could potentially get real time updates on breakthroughs in research and in the technology field. Students could also use Twitter to collaborate in research with students across the country and the globe to exchange short bursts of information in real time.
  

• Business: As with science, students could follow major players in the field of business and discuss recent business news via Twitter.
  

So, far from being a vast amount of 140 characters of trivial information, Twitter has the potential to be very useful to educators.

I hope you learned a lot about Twitter from this post and that maybe I changed your mind about the usefulness of Twitter.

If you are still a little bit confused about exactly what Twitter is then watch this and maybe it'll clear things up for you.









And now for a brief introduction:

I'm Marisa Grady, my content area is English and I have a personal blog on Blogger already that I guess I would consider my website though I haven't updated it in some time. I decided to write my blog post this week on Twitter since I knew a little bit about it but wanted to know more. I got a Twitter account to try it out and I'm not sure how personally useful it will be for me but I may find it a good tool for classroom use in the future. I'm willing to give it a try. :)