YES! The thing is that there are early adopters, adopters that come on board eventually and those that don’t want to adopt (not saying that is necessarily bad, just saying it’s something that happens).

But to get back to the question, why has Twitter taken off? Because the time is right…more educators are getting into this technology (finally) and/or being “allowed” to. There has been a fear from “some” educators not thinking it’s a tool to be used and uneducated parents/administrators, etc. who think it’s a waste of time. We’ve all been pushed to use the “traditional/Industrial Revolution” method of teaching. The world of education is slow to evolve.

It may also be that Twitter is fast enough and slow enough. Twitter is chat that is fast enough for those not needing an instant message and slow enough to not need constant user attention.

Another reason is the usability. It’s easier than discussion boards because you don’t have to drill down to read information. For our tasks it’s simple, especially compared to Facebook. Twitter is all there to see in one flat file. You don’t even have to jump through hopes to create groups like Facebook has you do. You can do it instantly with hash tags. To see a person’s Facebook you don’t need to ask to be their friend, in Twitter you can just follow them.

Perhaps most importantly there’s nothing that keeps the user out because it’s all public (yes, you can have it private if you choose). And what do educators like to do? Share of course!

Not thinking clearly today. Hope that made sense.

I don’t know where we will go next, but right now twitter works for me. I love that my ‘digital posse’ has gone global. That I can feel connected to something bigger then my own work issues and celebrations. Until the new thing comes around… I’m riding the ‘wave of collaboration’…

Anyhow, first and foremost I want to say that I hope the attitude of my post didn’t come across as “negative” toward math professors. I have a huge amount of respect for what they do and what they know. The point of the post was to point out some of the differences between my usual “techie” crowd versus the math crowd I met in Oregon.

So after reading the reply, I decided I’d add a few resources here for math professors who might be thinking about adding newer technologies to their classrooms. I’ve listed a few (in no specific order) below.

• CrAmster.com is a new web-based collaboration site that helps students in college-level courses. Professors, students, and enthusiasts are all encouraged to join. I highly recommend it – tell Carleigh I sent you.
• NING.com is a social networking site somewhat similar to Facebook or Myspace, but with a focused subject. I was given 2-3 different math NINGs to send people to, but they were all geared toward high school teachers. Check them out, though – I’m sure you’ll find some good discussion taking place.
• Twitter.com/MathChat is a discussion that takes place on the Twitter network. Similar to the #edchat post that has recently been posted on my blog, the #mathchat hashtag is used on Twitter to categorize issues dealing with mathematics. I also highly recommend the Twitter.com/#EdChat discussion that takes place every Tuesday at 7PM (Eastern Time US). Most of the edchats that we’ve had would be meaningful for college professors as well as K-12 teachers.
• Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts. I don’t have any specific suggestions, but searching the iTunes store for relevant podcasts… or searching with Google for blogs or wikis will give you a huge number of resources that could be used.
• MathML is a markup language similar to XML or HTML. It allows math to be written on the web similarly to how it would be written in a book. Similarly, there is LaTeXMathMl for all of you LaTeX fans (I still have no idea what that is ).

I’m sure there are millions of other newer technologies that could be used… these are the ones that come to me off the top of my head.

I’m going to advertise this all over the place and will let you (and the world) know how it goes.

Remind me in the spring, though: there’s not going to be time enough for this and coaching softball…