I realized after posting the poll about Twitter that it may be unknown to some exactly what Twitter is. Describing Twitter isn’t so much hard, as it is difficult to explain without leaving people wondering why anyone would want to use it… which is a question most people ask, and only try out of curiosity. The fact is, there isn’t one way to use twitter.

Let me give you a brief walk through.

I signed up for twitter, and now I have an empty page with a little box at the top that says “what are you doing?”. So I tell it something like “writing a blog post about twitter in education”. When people visit twitter.com/teachertechblog they will see that update. It is almost like a blog, except it goes way beyond that. With blogs, people have go to your website to find out the latest news.  With twitter, anyone that signs up and chooses to follow your posts will automatically get your update. Granted, any blog with RSS will update people in a similar fashion. But Twitter sends out these updates not only to web pages, but also to mobile phones via sms, Instant Messenger clients, and a whole bit list of web applications.

So lets say several people add my feed and see my post that says I am writing about twitter and wanting feedback. They get it on their phones, emails, etc… They have a choice of just smiling at the fact that they are staying or informed, or reply back with real-time feedback.

Someone else might want to use it for more of a social purpose to keep people updated with their lives. They might post something like “going to see Iron Man tonight at eight”. Their friends might ask to join, or ask how it was. The possibilities are endless.

If you would like to get started with twitter, you can sign up and add teachertechblog by going to twitter.com/teachertechblog and hitting the follow button. You’ll be in on the latest works in progress, and your feedback might get featured on the next article.