Twitter Discussion

For someone who vowed never to tweet too much, I found myself having fun discussing virtual worlds in our own virtual world (somewhat virtual).

While the Discussion Board on Blackboard can be helpful when talking among your classmates and professor, I found Twitter to be more useful. By adding tags, you can easily search topics that interest you, much more easily than with Blackboard. The notifications when someone replies to one of your tweets also helps you stay on top of the discussion as it progresses, and allows for more interaction as a result. However, it does not allow for such detailed discussion as on the Discussion Board, simply due to the character limit. Therefore, Twitter tends to be more helpful when sharing basic ideas/thoughts.

How does a Twitter discussion compare to a classroom discussion? Well, to be honest, I'm on the fence about that. On the one hand, being face-to-face for a discussion allows for much easier communication, especially if you're having a long, heated debate on a topic. Typing a 160 character response back and forth doesn't quite allow for such intellectual discourse. On the other hand, by allowing discussion to occur anywhere at any time, the discussion can continue on into different areas and ideas, as people are able to share them the minute it pops into their head - long after they leave the classroom or their computer (assuming you have a cell phone data plan).