The numbers of unread posts in my Google Reader were lower than I expected, so I figured other educators had a busy spring as well, but then I read this at Alan Levine's CogDogBlog:
I admit it.At first I was concerned: I love blogging, reading blogs, and having my students blog--am I to understand now that blogging is over? All of my favorite non-education-related bloggers are still blogging as usual, so I investigated further.
I still regularly review content RSS feeds in that archaic, pre-twitter-is-all-i-need thing called a “Feed Reader”. Me and 3 other holdouts.
Go ahead, call me a throw back.
First I went back to some of the old reliable edu-bloggers, the Will Richardsons, Steve Hargadons, Wesley Fryers, and Kathy Schrocks. There may have been a slight drop-off in the frequency of some of their posting and commenting, but nothing to worry about.
Then I tried Twitter again, since Alan seemed to imply that Twitter was replacing blogs. I registered for Twitter when it was new and read a few tweets, followed a few twitterers for a little while, and then tired of its glibness pretty quickly. I appreciated Alan November's use of it to get quick answers from his personal learning network, but can't use it that way myself, not yet having gotten around to developing my own PLN. I'm all for economy of language, but the 140 character limit seems to incline most writers to either superficiality or snark. Then there are the twitterers who treat their tweets like a Facebook status. If you are an edu-twitterer, you have no business using the media to tell me the cute thing your cat just did. But following Alan's post, I decided to revisit Twitter. I searched for the best twitterers in technology and education. Three frustrating hours later, I came to the conclusion that my initial impressions were still valid, and that blogs are still the best medium currently available for the kind of information and ideas that I want to read and share.
Am I missing something? Do you know of any twitterers who might change my mind?
