JISC RSC YH Exchange News

This feature on Twitter is taken from the latest edition of our RSC Newsletter, which will reach key contacts shortly.

It seems that everyone is on Twitter these days. From Barack Obama to Jonathan Ross, the idea of posting comments up to 140 characters in length for anyone to read on the internet is big in the news. But, according to Nielsen, only 40% of people stick with Twitter for more than a month. Does this mean that Twitter is a fad to be disregarded?

Well, we think no. The key is to think of Twitter as a communication tool, not a soap box on which to shout out what you had for tea or what the weather is like where you are.

Just a click away are people with similar job roles and interests as you. ‘Follow’ them and you will discover posted links to blogs and websites that could point out great new teaching tools or introduce interesting new ideas. You can engage in public or private conversations. The ethos behind Twitter is one of openness, with most who ‘tweet’ willing to respond to anyone.

Hashtags (#) are used to organise tweets on the same subject. Therefore, if you search for ‘#education’ you will see all the latest posts from around the world on that subject, listing current trends and links to more information, which allows you to research around a topic. A quick search for #education brought this result from ‘ToughLoveforX’: “Don’t fight cell phones in High School. Use them to get from here to there. #QR #education. From Ed week.com http://tinyurl.com/njahrm.” This provides a link to an article on ‘Making the Case for Mobile Computing’ in education.

You can also create your own tags. We used the tag #rscyh09 for our recent e-Learning Conference 2009. A quick search for that tag then made it easy for us to see what people thought of the event, as they wrote about it. It is the instant nature of Twitter that is key. You can view posts in real time. In this way, we received instant feedback on our conference – something that could also be useful in the classroom.

So try it out! If you want more help and advice, contact us by emailing support@rsc-yh.ac.uk.

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JISC_RSC_YH

If you want to read more from our Summer 2009 RSC Newsletter – including help on setting up your Twitter account – download it from our website: http://www.rsc-yh.ac.uk/newsletters.asp