Be sure to check out the article on Twitter in the Chronicle this week (permalink | free short-term link) , which features a cameo appearance by your humble blogger. (Personal interest aside, Jeff does a good job explaining Twitter for people who aren’t already drowning in the Web 2.0 koolaid.)
A few points:
1. Associate professor of English! Not assistant! Though I’m to blame for this: I superstitiously didn’t update my departmental webpage last spring when I was promoted, because I wasn’t tenured (for reasons that can best be described as pointlessly cruel in keeping with long-time local practice).
2. Since the article mentions how I use my iPhone for class-related twittering, surely that means the iPhone & contract are wholly tax-deductible, right?
3. Almost no students actually follow my Twitter feed. The reason I get feedback from students about Twitter is that Twitter talks to Facebook, updating my status whenever I post. Since the students are on Facebook . . .
4. There are a variety of ways to post to Twitter from your phone; my solution-of-choice is Hahlo, which is pretty fast, even over Edge.
4. One last point: What I like about Twitter is that it’s lightweight enough, and–thanks to the iPhone connection, fun enough–to make it easy and fun to do something (reflect on my teaching in a regular way) that I ought to do anyway. I’ve never had much luck at keeping a teaching journal, but this is pretty easy. Also, my instinctive response is to embrace anything that opens up the teaching process to students or other interested outsiders, and this does so in a format I’m comfortable with. (Obviously, one has to be somewhat mindful about what one posts! But this isn’t a very serious problem.)
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