Tweet This

I enjoyed class today. Twitter, twitter, and twitter.

Twitter is prettying interesting and I thought the “Election 2008” Twitter page was fascinating. When Prof. Dean put that page up on the big screen today, I was so surprised at the amount of activity. A new message was coming up every second. When I think more about it, Twitter is kind of cool and it is remarkable how the whole country can comment on the same page. I was interested to hear other people’s opinions about Twitter today in class. I know I have changed my mind about five times on what my feelings are toward Twitter.

As far as using Twitter in our class during the Debate, I am still skeptical. Jessica made a good point that it is tough to text or type a comment when you are trying to listen to what is being said. I agree with what she said about how listening carefully to every word is important. The reason why I am not fond of “twittering” while watching the debate is because I think it is hard to text or have a small conversation while you are trying to pay attention to what the candidates have to say. Not to mention, if you are texting you cannot see what other people say, unless you want to get bombarded with a lot of text messages. I would like to see what other people are saying and commenting on because sometimes people bring up a good point or they think of a comment in a different way than you do, which may be eye opening. If I had a computer that worked, it would be better situation but I still think it would be hard to analyze what the candidates are saying and develop an intellectual comment in under 140 words.

I think it would be more beneficial to maybe develop a chat room after the debate to have a discussion. How would people remember all their comments though? Well, maybe you could write a few notes or use the Twitter program (if you really are that into “twittering”) and then go back and look at the comments on Twitter and discuss them in a chat room. Well, what the hell is the different between Twitter and a chat room? Ah! I will come back to that another time. All in all, I don’t see many advantages of using Twitter for an academic purpose like our situation with using it for the debate. I feel that Twitter is not a template for an intellectual conversation nor is it useful for academic of social purposes.

On anther note, I think the Meebo application on the Locationf8 site is pretty distracting. I found myself today trying to read what people were writing and also trying to listen to Prof. Dean speak. I think it is kind of rude to not pay attention to what the teacher is saying especially if you are writing nonsense in Meebo. That is just my opinion. To end on a positive note, I think the two-week outlook of our work is a good format for the class and will move us in a good direction. I think people will come up with some good presentations.

Sam