Assignment 1

Our first assignment was to create a Twitter account. Mine can be found by clicking here. After creating the Twitter account, we were encouraged to personalize our account by changing the background, adding information, and adding a picture. Once this was complete, we then had to follow our class at twitter.com/it860 and post five Tweets to the class Twitter account by sending direct messages. I also managed to find many of the other classmates via Twitter and start following them. I'm not sure if this was a requirement, but I felt it added to the comraderie of the class.

I have used Twitter for some time for fun but have never really gotten heavily involved in Twitter. I don't follow many celebrities, and I think it's a little redundant for me, as I also have a Facebook account, where I can put up a status (that doesn't have to be 140 characters long, either).  However, I also have never sent a direct message to anyone before. I had some ususual difficulty at first (though I think it was due to a technical problem either with my computer or Twitter, honestly), but after the kinks were worked out, I found it to be an interesting and useful tool. I was excited that I was able to use my same Twitter account for this class as well as IT 648. That has been very helpful.

I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I will use Twitter for my own teaching methods. I feel e-mail is just as sufficient, if not more so, again, mainly due to the fact that you can only type 140 characters. However, I do appreciate that you can put a new Twitter status up from any cell phone with text messaging capabilities -- it doesn't have to be a phone with Internet capabilities. I know it seems like everybody in the world has an iPhone (or maybe that's just around my area), but my sweet little phone still does not go online.

In conclusion, I will continue to use my personal Twitter account just to keep up with the changing technologies, and I actually do have a Twitter account for our student newspaper. I update it when we have breaking news or a new paper has been published. However, I am still uncertain if I will use it for class purposes.