I like catching up with Education Week’s Politics K-12 blog on Twitter. Today I clicked through to the blog because of a tweet about a survey. Michele and Alyson (Don’t I know these girls from somewhere? They look so familiar.) asked readers to identify themselves by category — federal government, state/local governement, nonprofit, for-profit education company, media, teacher, etc.
I checked “other” and then commented about not fitting into any category.
Nancy, my dear friend and personal whistle-blower, is going to roll her eyes after reading this–I’m always trying to be special. Well, icanology is special and I took the opportunity to say so. And Twitter made it possible.
But Nancy’s right. Creating community is pointing out how other people and projects are special. Which is what Twitter is all about.
Here are ten reasons why I love Twitter:
1. It connects me to people and groups who are thinking in interesting ways and doing interesting things.
2. It jogs my brain. My favorite tweets are about thoughts, ideas, and new projects.
3. It’s an instant knowledge/social/cultural update. On a good day, it’s an instant upgrade.
4. It keeps me current in much more interesting and diverse ways than print and news services ever could.
5. It lets me live and work geographically and socially on the fringe of things.
6. It keeps me in the stream of, and sometimes even in the thick of, global events and movements.
7. It feels good. I occasionally get pleasantly surprised. I often get inspired.
8. It’s grounding. Some people complain that it’s a distraction but it’s fairly easy to eliminate “went to the beach” and “doing my laundry” types of tweets. Then it’s distracting like a newspaper is distracting.
9. It’s fast and efficient. I don’t have to follow the Education Week blog. I can skim their summary and link when I want to. I can find great blog entries from recommendations.
10. It’s low maintenance and obligation-free. It doesn’t ask anything from me. I can ignore it. I don’t have to use it for days, then when I get back to it, it’s still okay.
Oh, and you can follow icanology on Twitter here.
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