Next Tuesday is a special session to discuss and evaluate Twitter. We'll also discuss revising deadlines for blog posts/comments.
In preparation for that discussion and ultimate decision on whether or not to keep Twitter as part of our class, below are pertinent passages from your evaluations:
M1 (11am class):
I now can see some relevance to the use of Twitter such as networking and communicating and keeping in touch with group members as well as other classmates, and the professor. Although I feel that some of the other many social network sites may be more of a fit for use for the class as compared to Twitter I don’t feel that it is an absolutely ridiculous assignment. With twitter however, I liked how I could see what’s new while also being reminded of upcoming assignments that may be due thanks to my fellow classmates posts. I don’t necessarily think twitter should go, but I do feel that it has its pluses and negatives.
I do not think we should continue to use twitter, but if the class votes to keep it we should change the requirements. I think that we should have to post class related posts. If people want to post personal information, then they need to get a seperate account. I also think we should reduce the number of tweets required. Right now it seems like too much busy work.
I think it's nice to have there if we should need to contact someone with a question or group projects but having a required number to meet every week is a little extensive, overkill, and starting to become busy work. Many of us have never used such social communication tools before this. I've found, by communicating with my group for our project, that most of us preferred the use of e-mail to contact one another rather than twitter.
I have no problem keeping twitter if the personal posts about bathroom, eating and sleep breaks keep to a minmum. Also as long as linking your posterous.com counts as your "tweets" for the week. I do like the fact that Dr. Schirmer, is able to see all our posts because it lets him know the work we are doing and showing our participation. Also it is good to get team members information and moving on their part of the project. I don't have a problem with using twitter if these are the reason's we are using.
Should we continue to use twitter? Yes and no. I really like Twitter. I enjoy reading other peoples tweets or statuses and making comments here and there. However, there are two things I do not enjoy. I do not enjoy having to make the tweets refer to the class. Meaning, randomly having to find an article on technology and posting it or having to write something pertaining to the class. I would really enjoy using Twitter if the tweets could be about just anything.
[Twitter] didn’t just change the culture but absolutely created a community, again, whether we realized it or not. Everyone was in the dark, wondering how and why to use this new medium, not knowing much about it but what little we’ve heard, yet it created an open line of communication, even if awkward and limiting, in the late hours of the night, when just getting an “I’m so frustrated too!” made things seem not so dark.
To be honest, I don't feel I have done enough yet with Twitter. I would like to read more of the relevant class tweets, go to more links on class tweets, and look for organizations and people on Twitter that I might want to follow. I would like to ed links posts and engaged in more re-Tweeting and direct responses to Tweets. Thus, I am ambivalent as to whether we continue with Twitter or not.
I think we should continue to use Twitter, however I do not think there should be a required number of tweets anymore. This could be the "chatter" of the classroom, allowing us to freely discuss and comment on what is going on in class, rather than being pressured to think of something pertaining to the class. It is also just one more thing to check every day, and that has caused me to resent it a bit.
my inexperience with Twitter led me to have unrealistic expectations of its abilities in relation to our class's purposes. Maybe it's doing just fine and I should evaluate it more from a microblogging perspective, which is probably the correct frame of reference, anyway.Nonetheless, there do seem to be a few disadvantages to our use of Twitter thus far. While I can balance my time enough to meet requirements, it's more than just the time required to use Twitter in our class - it's the value related to the time invested. I think the time would be of better value if our class maintained Twitter accounts specifically made for the purposes of our class, that way the members of the class would not have to weed through hundreds of tweets, some of which are a bit vulgar, to meet the demands of our Twitter use.
Although I really enjoy twitter for communication purposes and getting to know my classmates, I found that I had to read 65 totally unrelated posts compared to 25 related (or at least loosely related) to technical writing...I do enjoy twitter for getting to know my classmates and it is helpful to see when everyone has a new blog post up, makes it easier to do my commenting, but I am not sure overall it is worth the effort of sifting through the non sense stuff. I have kind of had a change of heart in the past couple weeks, I started out completely in favor of twitter because I really did not know what else we could do. After I read the email of ideas I felt better about that aspect, and I have noticed my group is actually better at communicating through email. I do not think twitter is doing what it was supposed to do for our class.
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M2 (230pm class):
I see others using [Twitter] for the same reasons that I have. I don’t want to sound like a complainer but there are also people out there that use it for EVERYTHING! I understand that this is a way for them to communicate and express themselves but some people seem to post 45 times a day. I feel like they should have separate accounts. I try to use my Twitter account strictly for class use. I feel like I miss some of the important information, and have to sift through the useless posts to have proper contact with my classmates.
My estimation of Twitter was that someone had finally figured out how to use technology to create, once and for all, a way for people to feel as though they were actually talking to other people without ever having to listen to them. After having this initial reaction to Twitter, yet being compelled to endure in the face of being required to use it, what I slowly found out that was that there were some posts that I seemed dislike less than others.
Although some of my previous comments may contradict this, I think we should continue the use of twitter for this class. I have gotten used to it and am not interested in learning a new form of social media at this time. Twitter has its benefits and just has simply taken alot longer than expected for most to get used to, because of the class requirements.
I would say that, I don't see a negative reason to stop using twitter account to post anything. I personally like it, because I am learning from everybody. Twitter can enable osmotic communication in virtual teams and we can avoid social isolation...Lastly, messages can contain every type of information, give tip in someone's question, you can follow every twitter user you want. I can follow every bit of information that flows by... even when I finish the #345 course
I don't really see much of a reason to continue the use of Twitter other than students just not wanting the extra work that might be required otherwise. I personally think one extra Posterous blog per week or two or three additional comments per week would be extrememly beneficial. Since comments on blogs are already required, extra comments or an extra blog might encourage more student interaction.
We should continue to use twitter this semester because it helps us get easy and fast feedback from the instructor and classmates. It also sort of like a news port for technical writing. When I read other peoples tweets or see some of the information they have posted on their page, it gives me ideas on what I should blog about and opens my mind to the other possibilities there are in technical writing. That being said, I think the requirements for using twitter should be amended.
While I seem to be pretty anti-Twitter, if we choose to continue to use Twitter, you won’t hear much complaint from me. It isn’t hard to post five 140-character posts per week. Actually, from the list of alternative options, it is probably the easiest. However, to use a tool just to use it seems purposeless.
if we shouldn't continue to use twitter i think we should use something that people can get on and use right away and that they are familiar with. im not against twitter at all i am just getting the grasp of it and i think that would have to be black board just because everyone has a account with the class already and im sure everyone has already used it for another college class this is already set up and has been used by many people then this way we wouldn't have to fish and try and find people in our class im sure ive not added everyone yet on twitter. so if we switched then i think this would be the perfect thing to jump into.
I would hate to think that we would not continue to use Twitter, especially after reading some of the alternatives that would replace it. I think adding an additional blog post requirement would be too much to do all in one week for the one’s striving to get an A in the class because that would make it 4 blogs we would have to submit per week. Not only do I think that that would be too time consuming but after Gentle’s and McMurrey’s readings are completed it will be even more difficult to find relatable topics to write about. I also don’t think it would be necessary to meet up more than we already do considering James has been very good about keeping in touch with us via email. Any questions/concerns that I have had have been addressed in a timely and clear manner. Meeting more would just be time consuming in my opinion and could be used for better purposes.
I think we should still have Twitter available to us to use like a discussion board, but we shouldn’t be required to post on it. I like the idea of Twitter in theory, but when actually having to use it, I didn’t like it. I think there are other things we could use that would make communication easier and more organized.