Yesterday evening, I was ‘googleying’  how to open a flv file I’d converted using media converter. I knew I could open it in Smartnotebook, but wondered if it would be possible to open it straight from the desktop icon.

On a whim, I posed the same question on Twitter – and almost immediately the sound of replies began ‘tweetering’ from my desktop.

 

 In around 10  minutes or so, I had learned much more than I would have in hours of Google searching, and managed to – not only open the file icon from the desktop – but vastly increase my understanding of Flash/flv/swf/various available free downloadable players … etc, etc.

I felt really chuffed when I went into work this morning and I couldn’t wait to tell my (much more knowledgeable!) colleague what I’d learned. When he heard the subject matter, he (very helpfully and articulately) began to explain all the terminology……. but within minutes, I was lost.

And that’s when the penny dropped  ………. Twitter is better than Face to Face!

I‘ll try to explain why I think that is 🙂

Twitter Thoughts

• The 140 character limit meant that responses arrived in small manageable chunks
• Explanations didn’t have the chance to overtake my level of understanding
• I was able to ‘digest’ the short pieces of information coming my way
• I could only respond to that new learning using the same number of characters
• I really had to think about my short responses because I wanted to make my understanding of the points clear to my ‘mentors’  ….   David N     planted the ‘mentor’ seed in my thinking 🙂

Face to Face Thoughts

• It’s very easy to make assumptions about others’ understanding of the topic
• One wrong assumption about understanding of just a tiny detail of what you’re saying – and you could lose them
• It’s very easy to misread thoughts and understanding via facial expressions –  because maybe they’ve learned to cover this up 🙂

When I think about it, my twitter learning experience was very similar to the formative assessment practice that lots of teachers strive to achieve.

Maybe there’s a place for Twitter it in the classroom ???