Twitter is one of those social media sites that I love to hate. There are so many great benefits of Twitter, but to me, the cons outweigh the pros. I have thought long and hard about what I love about Twitter, and here are my biggest reasons why I log on:
- You get the very latest (second by second) information update on anything.
- You can have conversations from people from all over the world.
- You can listen in on other’s thoughts on trending hot button topics.
- You can ask for advice from many different professionals, and get a response or start a conversation.
- You can learn about so many resources just by using a hashtag.
As a professional learning network, Twitter has the ability to connect teachers from all different regions of the world. Just this week I was able to read tweets from teachers in several different states regarding their proposed plans for opening schools post COVID. The ideas were daunting but it is nice to know that these conversations are taking place and there are underlying concerns that districts are trying to address.
Also, Twitter as a professional network is a great place to join live chats, or forums about topics that can enrich my teaching practices. Participation in these discussions is free and often very enlightening. It is a great way to discover like minded individuals or those working on similar things and follow each other for continued support and resources.
While these are indeed wonderful benefits to Twitter, it will never become a favored resource for me for these reasons:
- It is too busy. I just do not feel like I can keep up with the active ongoing threads all of the place. Second by second is too fast for my brain.
- It too often the place where people go to complain, whine or spread bad vibes.
- It is way too easy to get sidetracked when you are on a real quest for information.
- Hashtags have become too mainstream. Everyone uses them in excess so the search feature is often filled with tons of truly unrelated garbage that must be sorted through.
- It is an unreliable resource. Links are often removed when wrong information gets posted too soon. These removed posts are necessary but a true indicator of the massive amounts of unreliable information being posted daily.
So, while I do have a Twitter account, I have found it is my least used of all social media. My biggest complaint is that it is a real time sponge and just too busy for my brain most days. I do recognize that it is a great platform to build a network of resources and professional relationships, it is just not my preferred technology tool for doing those things.
My Two Cents by Kim Barndt 
Kim,
I absolutely agree with your cons. I never put too much thought into why I dislike Twitter, but you really hit the nail on the head. One of my favorite cons you wrote about was the fact that it is too busy for your brain to keep up with it. Yep!! There is so much information in such a short amount of time that it is overwhelming. My second favorite con you wrote about was the second one. I couldn’t agree more with this one. Social media has become many people’s source for information and news. They also think it is their source for complaining and opinion stating. While that may be slightly true, I don’t want my attitude about this world or my opinion to be altered by reading about some random person’s opinion, so I will just ignore it all! I am trying to stay positive in this world full of negatives, so the less Twitter in my life, the better! Since I agreed with all of the negatives about Twitter, I guess I will agree that there are a lot of positives to the site as well; such as, the ability to have a conversation with someone anywhere in the world. That is definitely cool! Overall, the cons outweigh the pros for me so Twitter will never be my go-to site for education or for personal use!
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Kim,
You have really good points for both your pros and cons. I’m not much of a Twitter fan, but have used it in the past. I do like the constant updating to things. For those who use Twitter regularly, I’m sure that is a huge plus for them. Twitter certainly has some perks. I can relate to being too busy to checking it all the time. When I want to stay on top of things going on in the world, I watch the news. As for listening to someone else’s opinion, I will set and listen to my husband, which is always fun to watch him rant.
Dana
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Kim, I, too, agree with your cons. I have other resources I would much rather use. Although there are many pros to using twitter for professional development, for me, they do not out-weigh the cons.
Becky
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Kim,
I have similar feelings to you about Twitter when used personally. It is definitely my least used account, I find that I log into it less and end up being very behind on reading Tweets. I am curious to see where my “educator only” account takes me. So far my professional development experience with it have been pretty positive. 🙂
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