Our flapping around the Tweetosphere has continued (first installment) and after reviewing the Community of Inquiry model we realized that Twitter is a tool that supports professional learning in a community of educators.
As an educator who finds value in Twitter, I embrace a social presence albeit a strangely distant personal one. Now being on Twitter for awhile and having met a few folks via conference has developed my confidence and I’ve now moved beyond the acquaintance phase with some. I have twitter friends who we jokingly say we stroke each other’s Twe-ego and retweet and comment on each others tweets. By using messages on Twitter I have chatted with a few people and we have built more of a camaraderie and we try to work together to engage together. Lisa is at the beginning of building social presence and following people in order to make some acquaintances. We’ve chatted about Tweetiquette in the Tweetosphere in order to build positive relationships.
I have a perfectly respectable reputation as a socially present, empathetic and functioning human. But the concept of social presence, in a digital medium, comes with a whole host of new meanings and social conventions. I find it fascinating to look at how we humans (okay, some humans) can so quickly adapt old ideas and mores so they are applicable to new environments and situations. That said, becoming Twitterate is very much like trying to fit into a new workplace or family - it can be stressful! Before heading to my first day as a teacher, thoughts like “will they like me”, “will I like them?” “do I look okay?”, “am I qualified?” ran through my mind. Perhaps beginning to eek out a social presence online is not quite the cognitive equivalent of starting a career in teaching, but I found myself asking the same sorts of questions and needing guidance on how to “be” in this new environment.
Pondering on what Twitter does for my gray matter, what kind of cognitive presence does it have that would support me as teacher librarian? Thus far, I have dabbled in a book club that was a group of librarians discussing @MaryannWolf ‘s book #ReaderComeHome which I really enjoyed since people shared opinions about the book and more importantly, in my mind, how they applied it to their practice. These ‘slow chats’ are effective since the pace isn’t ‘live’ and it gives people a chance to jump in when and where they want. Slow chats are an interesting phenomena on Twitter since they truly allow a community of practitioners to construct meaning together. Hatching into the tweetosphere has improved my practice.
In order for me to begin using Twitter as an aspect of cognitive presence in my own learning experience, my ability to “talk the talk” (or squawk the squawk) is imperative before I am able to take part in and take advantage of the many conversations. I have tried to Tweet a few times now, but more importantly, I am reading and following and being generally inspired! Mel, on the other hand, is leading the way and using Twitter to co-construct meaning with colleagues from around the world and in many different context and I watch from the branch...
As a Tweeter, I do not yet have enough of a following to be a leader, or more of a teacher presence, in the teacher librarian community. Although I do put out questions and try to stimulate conversation, it is still hit or miss for what my followers jump on board with. If I want my role to diversify, I will need to be more cognisant of my twitter participation.
There’s always programs like Coetail - Certificate of Education and Information Literacy which is an online certificate program and one of it’s avenues of learning is Twitter. It will be very interesting to see how Twitter continues to evolve and grow.
Rob Power @PowerLrn has an established teacher presence on Twitter. He makes tweeting a component of many of his courses in order to coach students to leap from the nest into the Tweetosphere. His coaching has taken a couple of flight paths one asking students to post discussion questions before their presentation and the other is to follow a class hashtag.
Twitter does have value, but you need to take some time to build a nest and share your voice before you see the results. We all have to begin somewhere, so jump into the bath and tweet!
