Twitter Thing Not Going Away

The U.S. Department of Education announced today on their own twitter feed that they will make an announcement on Race to the Top on their press secretary's twitter feed next week. That's right, multiple twitter feeds with different streams of information are flowing out of most organizations of import nowadays, especially educational organizations. And, because it is interactive, you can ask them questions and get replies, like my friend Bud Hunt did re: Race to the Top. 

What's that? Not on Twitter? Still getting your news the old way? You've not built a Web 2.0 personal learning network?

That's cool. Your reluctance to embrace these new technologies ensures I get to know the news first and I get to have more conversations with more people in the education world. You see, Twitter is a professional hangout these days. Twitter, especially Twitter, is not a teenager melodrama hub. It's a place where real people in the education world are sharing real information with other real people. In fact, while law embraced blogging in a big way that education generally did not, to me it appears that education is embracing twitter in a way that the law is not.   

So, luckily for you, I'm in a sharing mood. Here's my Twitter Primer for Professors. For you ed law types out there, start with following @ELAOffice, @legalclips, @jimgerl, @canyonsdave, @mcleod, @jonbecker, @BrianJasonFord, @schoolfunding, @richhag, @schlfinance101, @EdEquality, etc. (don't forget me), and go from there.       

I really hope that you'll join me because it becomes more useful for all of us when more of us are sharing, but if you do not, it's your loss because this thing, and lots more tools like it, are only getting bigger and more ingrained in our society every day. And, those of us tapped into those fresh information streams have a serious competitive advantage in an information industry.