I do use Twitter for school work, just not comfortably I prefer to post to the class blog & syndicate to twitter. The latest twitter crisis reinforces this.
I’ve never really liked the idea of Twitter or any other service being the official or main channel of schools (or government services). Schools should not be promoting an advertising service. My ideal would some sort of #IndieWeb set up, with micro.blog style aggregation & syndication. Federation might be a close second.
@johnjohnston I do (feel I have to) use Twitter too, uncomfortably. I like the idea of smaller #indieweb which is kind of what we used to have with edtechroundup. Hoping I can cut through the noise, advertising and ‘in plain sight’ marketing and contribute a bit more freely here. We’ll see.
indieweb
@johnjohnston Please know that schools frequently have to go where their community is. Also, we’ve had to deal with end user comfort level. The people who post, teachers and administrators, want to use what they are comfortable with. Its a trade off that they are comfortable with
Hi Troy, I am a primary teacher. I do use Twitter to post about what we do in class. I got on Twitter quite early because of the edtech community that was building there. I think, like many technologies used in Edu the adoption was not particularly thought out in advance but muddled through. It started as a place to have quick chats & post pointers to other content. It has become, for some, the main conduit to parents. I understand the affordances but worry about the cost.
An important point John, and as you say, made even more significant by recent developments.
I wonder to what extent, if any, schools have undertaken research to explore the effects of their use of social media platforms? How have they helped schools (presumably?) communicate and connect more effectively with their local and broader communities? What have the benefits and drawbacks been? What unanticipated consequences have arisen and how were they addressed? And then to your final point, if #IndieWeb or federated solutions were offered or adopted as an alternative, how might the implementation and/or outcomes be different?
Hi Ian,
Recent developments certainly make you think.
These are all great questions, I see a few schools that seem to get a deal of interaction with parents, but I mostly see likes.
I am not sure if either the #IndieWeb or mastodon are ready for schools. Twitter wins for ease of use for non-technical folk.
micro.blog is, imo, a great example of how #IndieWeb and ownership can be done. I can join in from here pretty seamlessly(for free) and there is a great community where folk who pay for micro.blog hosting and independent blogs are treated equally in ‘social’ side of things.
Manton’s book on micro.blogging, its history, problems, solutions is pretty great imo.
https://book.micro.blog If you’ve not read it I think you will enjoy it.