My virtual visit to the EduCon 2.0 conference in Pennsylvania wrapped up on Sunday afternoon and I was left with a great feeling of excitement about what lies ahead for education and technology. I also left with a new appreciation for that twitch-happy communication thingy, Twitter.
As with most new web applications, it takes me a while to get past the “yeah, so what?” phase and see the real potential of the app. I’m still not 100% there with Twitter, but I actually saw it used with a purpose over the weekend at Educon (and by purpose I mean more than the “I just ate a dozen tacos” kind of update that twitter is known for.)
There were hundreds of other educators like myself who were attending EduCon’s sessions via video stream with back-channel discussions going on in a chat window beside the screen. Our chat ranged from complaining about lost streams, bad audio or actually discussing elements of what the presenters were talking about. At some sessions, there was a person actually reading our chat questions out to the presenter for them to respond to. It was cool, but nothing really new going on there.
What was new (to me) was that in addition to the back channel chat, many of my fellow virtual attendees were twittering with each other, their colleagues actually at the conference and with some of the presenters. From the back-channel chat and the presenters responses, it was clear that despite being connected to two separate groups, the actual conference in PA and the my fellow stream viewers, I was still missing part of the conversation.
When I’d had enough of guessing the twitter’d content of the conversations, I fired up my long-forgotten twitter account and started following some of the folk twittering away. It was like having a babblefish stuck in my ear. Twitter was the final piece in a fragmented conversation spanning dozens of states, two countries and several web application.
As I listened, chatted and tweeted (apparently), it struck me that these educators were exhibiting the multi-tasking skills that we observe (and often despair about) in the kids we teach. I take this as a good sign. Educators are speaking the same language of multi-tasking that our kids seem to speak so naturally. I’m confident this communication will lead to more connection between teacher and student.
While the actual use of Twitter during the conference was cool to observe, I’m still not 100% sure that it’s the best vehicle to deliver this content. But with some many educators excited about twitter, there must be something there.
For more on Twitter at Educon 2.0, check out Will Richardson’s great post over at Weblogg-ed.