Twitterpated

In which our author learns to stop being a twit and embrace Twitter.

I'm not particularly Twitter savvy.  I once relegated a friend to sending late night puns he wanted desperately to share to only share through Twitter.  This way I could read them at my leisure rather than swearing he was dead in a ditch somewhere in California and desperately texting me to tell his mother he loves her with the last of bit of energy in his stiffening, cold fingers.  As it turns out, he just wanted to tell me about the prosthetic selling con man arrested for selling faux knees.  It wasn't quite wake up in a cold sweat material, to say the least.

When it comes to updating people on every minute feeling or move I make throughout my day, my preferred method is the status update on Facebook.  This is mostly because my aforementioned fossilized phone is not set up to "ping" me every time there is a new post from someone else, and when I check Facebook, I personally scroll through the ones that I don't really care about (links to YouTube videos, party announcements, etc.)  I assume that if my updates are narcissistic enough to annoy, my friends and countrymen can just hide them and save me and themselves the angst of knowing about my wardrobe crisis or my cat's antics.  However, I've noticed in my own newsfeed the spread of a little bird-like icon indicating the rise of the tweet in status update popularity.

What is the purpose of Twitter?  According to Twitter's website, it is "a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. Simply find the public streams you find most compelling and follow the conversations."  It's almost like a mini-news feed, expect in addition to news, you can get social information in addition to updates from your favorite restaurants, stores, and hobbies.  (Perhaps I am revealing myself just a little too much).  On the surface, Twitter is a resource for those who want to stay in the know.

So, why should a teacher care about Twitter?  Recent polls conducted have shown that only 1-11% of Twitter users in 2009 were in the age 12-17 bracket (iStrategyLabs and comScore).  It's not as heavily utilized as Facebook, Skype and text messaging for whatever reason that may be.  Some students are using it but often in heavily handpicked groups, and parents and teachers still warily eye this trend due to privacy concerns.  However, one of the appeals of Twitter is its relative anonymity and it's allowance to slip into a "character" based on individual interest aspects of one's personality.  Take this blog for instance-- I will fully admit that I am not willing (and perhaps able) to reveal myself in totality in this medium.  My persona is that of teacher and student of teaching; I edit, cut, reveal, and hide aspects of myself in a highly controlled way.  Like Twitter, I have created a reality rather than interacted within it.  This gets at the crux of why I've stopped fighting Twitter; it is a creative outlet with great potential and meaning to challenge new forms of literacy and creative writing.

While Twitter is not often used as a creative medium and can give exasperating accounts of daily routines and fits of "jealz", it is a relevant way to teach writing.  Twitter only allows a user 140 characters or less to reveal oneself or one's thoughts.  What if we used this to teach conciseness in writing as well as writing that is relevant in the college-aged 2011 world.  (Ever wish long winded, badly written YouTube rants would fall by the wayside?  We could at least teach students to write above that).

It's also a relevant lesson in internet safety and social media marketing.  Students can study the effects of ignorant or ineffective tweets on a company's success.  They can see the damage one thoughtless comment can have on a reputation, leading to a relevant discussion of bullying and privacy.  All of these effect their lives in meaningful ways-- what is popular, what we consume, and how we relate to one another has been permanently changed thanks to these new communication mechanisms.  Teaching students how to navigate these systems and analyze their effects allows students to consider just how much technology shapes our understandings and our lives, allowing them to better question the world presented before them and how we gather information.

Lastly, what about the creation aspect of Twitter?  Aside from the useful resources that Twitter may provide for creative writing prompts and ideas, Twitter itself has provided a new way for us to think about how poetry is presented and structured.  Have we entered the era of the twaiku?  What about a method of helping students get in touch with character's voices, in their own writing or in those of others that they read and study in a fun, relevant assessment of understanding?  What about collaborative writing work in which students may use the inspiration of one another to create a story from two perspectives, or posit persuasive claims, data, and encounter rebuttals from others before writing an argumentation essay?

I myself entered the Twitter world for this purpose.  Writing is such a lonely endeavor and students often do not see the meaningfulness of it in their daily lives.  Schools teach students that writing is for a teacher and a grade, but we ought to teach that it is for an audience and a message.  Writing is meant to be read, as a form of communication be it non-fiction, lyrical, or a Beckett one act play; it's meant to say something to someone else.  I would like a medium of creation that is interactive with others, perhaps because technology has, in a way, isolated us further.  However, how is technological isolation any different from the isolating influences of writing as it is traditionally taught in a classroom?  Writing isn't meant for a grade, but for a meaningful method of speaking with others in this world.

In short, if communication be the soul of writing, tweet on.