Tweet Timelines

I must admit that for a very, very long time I was one of those people who thought that there was no point to Twitter. I wondered why anyone would care what anyone else was doing on a minute-by-minute basis, and I thought anyone who would Tweet had to be quite self-involved to think anyone else would care what they said.

Then a couple of weeks ago I got my first taste of how Twitter could be useful. When there was an earthquake down in Roosevelt, no one that I was with could seem to figure out exactly what happened. People had cell phones and laptops and were hurriedly typing away and googling "Utah earthquake," but no one found anything...until...my husband thought about checking Twitter, and voila! There was our answer. None of the media news outlets had a chance to post anything, but people living near Roosevelt broke the news of the earthquake to Utahns via Twitter.

I still think that some of the other technologies we've learned about could be put to better use in a library than Twitter could, but I'm sure there are some possible uses for it. I guess I'm still not sold on Twitter because I had to "google it" to get some Classroom Twitter ideas. There were actually quite a few good ones. I especially liked the following ideas: Tweet about a useful source that could help students on a project; provide daily tips like a word or a book of the day; link to a book trailer or a video book talk; schedule meetings with other teachers; etc. The list goes on, but I think that's quite a good start. Sorry for dissin' ya Twitter!