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Twitter vs Blogs or Where have all the posts gone
I’ve just realised that I haven’t posted anything since September. This is by far the longest gaps between blog postings, and I blame (or you can thank!) Twitter. In that time I’ve made made about 70 Twitter updates, which may seem a lot, but I’m hardly a prolific Twitterer compared to some of the people I follow.

This seems to be part of a trend – here are a few other people who’ve made the same observation:

http://www.thewavingcat.com/2007/11/08/twitter-vs-blogs-revisited/

http://www.wadehodges.com/2008/12/01/catching-up-and-twitter-vs-blogs/

http://blog.andrewparker.net/2007/09/05/twitters-ruining-my-blogging/

http://graemethickins.typepad.com/graeme_blogs_here/2008/04/blogging-less-t.html

and many, many more…

So what’s happening? Is this a good thing? I’m not sure, but I’ve a sneaky feeling that this post would make sense more as tweet “Twittering more – blogging less. Is this part of trend?”.

A teacher will come to me and say “I want to blog.” OK, that’s great, but why? What are you thinking? Why do you want to blog? What do you know about a blog?

As a systems analyst consulting many small businesses I used to have the same discussion. Clients would start out with “I need a faster computer” or “I need a database”. They are the tools to achieve a goal, not the goal. What do you want to achieve?

Once clients get back to business basics the outcome is obvious with a cost benefit analysis of different options. They don’t need to second-guess what technology is required, they just need to see if a proposed solution (that may or may not involve technology) can solve their problem from a business sense.

This is all well and good when people actually ask for a solution, but there exists another set of teachers that simply do not know that there is a possible solution out there. From a consulting standpoint this would be the responsibility of the school to schedule reviews.

From a more personal standpoint than barging in under the school’s insistence, we’ve set up a laptop club where we can lightly cover different technologies each week in a fun environment so that teachers at least know what is out there.

Another challenge we have is we can get stuck in a technology rut. I have often criticized previous generations of teacher for ‘laminating their lesson plans’ Meaning they don’t change, but I myself have become so comfortable using PowerPoint (or other slide show style tools) that I find I am reluctant to branch into new tools. Thanks for the encouragement.

Thanks for the inspiration!

As the teacher is talking, I (and maybe this is just me) can start to visualize what tool they are talking about. They might not be talking about a technology at all, but I can usually visualize a digital tool that can reach the outcome they are after through their idea.

Dan:
Thanks Jeff for the follow up posting here. I think you are right in that one of the main roles that an effective educational technologist can fulfill is to keep abreast of, review, and sort through all of the tools out there…putting the most promising ones in one’s toolbox. Then when it comes time, one can listen to the needs of the faculty, teachers, students, etc. and reach into ones toolbox for the appropriate tool(s). My father-in-law has a great array of tools to do almost any kind of homebuilding project. Similarly, I think educational technologists need their toolbox as well.

But a somewhat related though here is… “How many monkeys can we expect to put on the back of teachers, professors, instructors?” i.e. how many tools do they need to know? Can they know and still be up-to-date within their disciplines (along with the other duties they carry out)?

When it comes to creating and delivering effective learning content, can one person do it all anymore? I doubt it. The bar is rising to high and too quickly. There will be an increasing push towards using TEAMS of people to build and deliver content. One of those team members will be someone with technological know-how, but there will also be instructional designers, writers/editors, programmers, videographers, digital audio experts, simulation designers, interactivity designers, etc. Thus I predict the use of consortiums and/or pooling resources. The other possibility is what I call the “Forthcoming Walmart of Education” (see calvin.edu/~dsc8)

Student engagement is an area I’m concerned about…with K-12′ers growing up around such a media-rich environment, will it become more difficult to keep them engaged? Perhaps with the status quo … yes. But I think if we turn more control over to students it may help. Perhaps they will create the courses of the future.

Anyway, sorry for the integration of several topics here, but I think they are all somewhat related.

Thanks Jeff!
Dan Christian
calvin.edu/~dsc8

I have been frustrated recently because I used a classroom blog to introduce low income students to the power of the internet and found it to be very successful. But when I tried to implement it with a more 2.0 group, it bombed.

I saw your comment on Steve Dembo’s blog, you are right about making your posts more interesting by adding pictures and links. Before I didn’t do that stuff but now I am and my blog has became more successful.

Thanks for the advice!