Tweet, chat, hashtags, oh dear!

I have to admit my foray into Twitter has my feathers in a bit of a flap. I signed up with great reluctance and hesitation but what’s one to do when they want a good grade in ECMP 355, they jump in.  So jump in I did.  At first I found it frustrating and time consuming the two things that drive me buggy when I have limited time to get stuff done.  As I played around with it a little bit, and started to discover how to use the site, it got a little better.  I also had an aha moment, when I realized that the frustration is something I experience with all new to me technology. I am not a patient person, and I tend to expect to know stuff the first time, none of this learning curve for me.  Reality is that I don’t know this stuff and it takes time to learn.  I also realized that I tend to feel this way more when it involves interacting with others, such as in social media.  I felt this way when I first entered the world of Facebook (FB)  as well. I got it over it then and I am starting to unruffle my feathers now with Twitter.

One of the struggles I have with Twitter is the free following of people and that people are free to follow you with out asking first.  I tend to like to share my boys antics and photos on Facebook and I realized very quickly with the different way of connecting on Twitter that I would not be sharing such things there.  I know there is no guarantee of total privacy on FB either but when I put it out there I do know where those posts are going originally and I can set my privacy settings for photos.  I may find that Twitter has some of those same controls, through getting more familiar with Twitter or my classmates who read this may choose to enlighten me.

Hashtags are still somewhat fuzzy to me.  When I search with them, I don’t always seem to find what I am looking for, that is definitely an user problem, not a Twitter problem.  Another thing that makes it fuzzy is that they are used on other sites such as FB, and I am not sure how that links to Twitter or if it does.

The #saskedchat was really good, I enjoy live chats.  Before social media, chats were a great way to connect to others in real time, and I always enjoyed the ones I was involved in.  I felt a bit overwhelmed and a bit pressured to jump in and comment as it was part of our class time.  When I join something new like that, I like to introduce myself and then sit back for a session or two and observe.  I like to get the feel of the people before I jump in because I didn’t really have that chance I felt like I was floundering a bit. I look forward to connecting to more of the #saskedchats in the future. I think it will be a wonderful resource as both a student-teacher and once I am a teacher.

Much to my dismay, I think I will really like Twitter.  The biggest downside I see to Twitter, is the same one I have with FB, they both can be giant time wasters, especially when you just don’t want to write that paper or read that text or vacuum.  I can also see the value in keeping Twitter my professional space and FB private.  Twitter is here to stay.