So few of the comments actually zeroed in on what David said about the missed opportunity to meet specific kids at a truly unique school.

While the Twitter-iffic lights seem (like all the 2.0 white noise) to gain all the attention (read above), his underlying point was about the chance to focus on the students.

Instead, all the chatter (OK, perhaps 90%) continues to be about adults/educators trying to draw some line in the sand about why they use one tool over another or about why they need F2F time with other adults or about validating some long-ago (still vibrant) middle school popularity chart still in play.

All fine. And yet, the real opportunity — both at SLA this year and with David’s follow-up post — lay in the real kids at a real school.

Can’t help to think that if I were on the outside looking in that something would feel odd about all this. Twitter is the noise, right, nothing more than a shiny piece of a metal captivating a cage full of ferrets on some level (and I admit I’m a ferret who likes shiny things on occasion). On the other hand, the kids were the signal at SLA this year, a signal sadly missed for the most part by many/all of us in one manner or another.

I take David’s challenge very seriously.

I stand corrected if I have ever — at SLA or elsewhere — allowed my personal/professional need for validating my network/ego get in the way of the kids right in front of my eyes. I’m throwing no rocks at glass houses that I’m not already sitting inside of. I’m the first reflective target, not anyone else. Only ‘receive’ this if if fits on your own terms.

Otherwise, I’m just raising my hand to amen David’s honesty here. And hoping the defense of Twitter (et al) will become less and less the white noise purpose of our individual and shared efforts in this emerging field re-imagined education.

I’ve met you in person and found you to be quite charming and a great speaker. However, I’m quite taken aback at your comment towards me. I am who I am, wiki projects and all. I’m a practical classroom teacher with my heart firmly in the classroom and helping my own children, two of whom have LD. I’ll leave the fame-seeking to someone else. Meanwhile, while I try not to take things personally, I believe your comment to be unkind.

As for standardizing tagging – I believe that there are times and places tagging can make things easier (i.e. hitchikr) but the person who wishes for folksonomy to disappear would be totally wrong. It depends on what you’re trying to do — if you’re trying to aggregate the posts that your students wrote about a keynote speaker onto a wiki page for the speaker, then a standard tag makes sense – it is the ONLY way to make the rss out of delicious work.

As for decisions — this is what I’m saying — I had someone dm me the other day that perhaps twitter was a bad thing b/c David Jakes said it was and maybe she should delete her account. (!?) As a widely read edublogger you have a great responsibility. That is why I went and asked for the source of her thoughts about twitter and ended up here.

It sounds as if I read your post not as you intended but I think if others are considering deleting their accounts b/c of it, they too are not reading it as you intended? This was a person NOT participating in shameless self promotion but rather, a beginner at al of this.

I do agree, however, that when people are twittering instead of talking face to face that they are missing the point. That is truly a pet peeve of mine.

Twitter has truly become an instrumental part of the orchestration of tools and experts into my classroom and I couldn’t imagine life without it… of course next year it may be something else. It is ultimately about the classroom and connecting in ways that positively impact the students.

Just unfollow people who are shameless self promoters. (if that includes me, so be it)

I guess my point on deleting your account was that if it isn’t adding to your life, it is taking away. If it is causing you consternation then forget it… life is too short and it is not worth it. NOt that there is some grandiose something that you’ll miss out on if you’re not in twitter, but rather, that we need to all decide what things are important for us to spend our own time on and honestly, that answer will be different for each of us. We all have different objectives that we must accomplish and should personalize our own learning spaces.

I find the argument of scarcity and Twitter’s role in facilitating laziness (Twitter is taking the place of X, whether X be “real” blogging or f2f conversation or “proper” evaluation and sharing of resources or “substantive” conversation) to be less than compelling. But that may just be another artifact of operating in a different group than you. Twitter makes it easy to move… why not just do so?

Twitter Patrol: Concerned that David is missing all of the positive connections on Twitter.

David: Not missing positive connections, just stating his opinion on the over use of self promotion and people trying to become famous.

Twitter Patrol: Still concerned that David is missing all of the positive connections being made on Twitter.

David: Nope, still not missing the positive connections that go on in Twitter. Still just concerned that it is being used for self promotion and trying to become famous. Still stating his, David Jales’ opinion.

Twitter Patrol: Want David to know of all of the positive connections being made on Twitter.

This is like an episode of Seinfeld, only less funny. Carry on.

“I thought the original point of the article was to go beyond observation of behavior, into evaluation (or judgment, if you will) of behavior and then some recommendations, explicit and implied, on how to change the behavior, based on the evaluation.”

No, that was never the point. Simple observations about my experience.”

Thank you for explaining the point. It also explains why what you say and what many of the other commenters say does not feel like people connecting and talking TO each other (rather than at each other). In my case, I guess some parts of my research background (e.g. ethnographic methods), or maybe some of my personal philosophies, made, and still make it hard to define what you do as “simple observations.” I don’t think it’s just semantics, either. Here, with quotes from your post, is what I mean:

“Twitter is a place to share a resource, a link to a new blog post, or an insight, and even a place to have a little fun” – this is what I would call “an observation.” You look at Twitter and you report some parts of what you observe going on, metaphorically describing it so readers could understand better (metaphorically, because Twitter’s not a place). However, this is just a part of your quote.

“At its best, Twitter is a place to share a resource, a link to a new blog post, or an insight, and even a place to have a little fun. At its very worst, Twitter is a self-indulgent exercise in self-promotion and pettiness.” – In my definitions of what is what, these are evaluations: your opinions ABOUT your observations. You say that self-promotion is bad, and sharing resources and having little (not too much, implied?) fun is good. I am trying to read it as you disclosing your observer biases now, after you explained that the goal of the post was observation only. I, frankly, see it as a stretch on my definitions, though. I don’t think other commenters read these quotes, and other such quotes, as “simply observations.” In your last comment you say, “it’s about over the top self-promotion” – again, it reads like an evaluation/judgment: you observed how much self-promotion is going on, you know how much self-promotion would be enough, and Twitter has more than what you consider enough.

The decisions you suggest others make, well, they are implied in evaluations, for most readers. Do more of what is good, do less of what is bad. Do more link sharing, because it’s the best, do less of self-promotion, because it’s the worst, or at least there is too much of it. Don’t send people e-mails asking why they dropped you from their reading list – it’s ridiculous. Read research and put it into Twitter, because it will be about self-growth, and it’s the true goal. Again, it’s hard for me not to assume you actually call people to change their behavior according to your evaluation of your observations. Don’t you want people to do more of what you evaluate as “the best” and less of what you evaluate as “the worst”? Your post reads as a call to action, almost a manifesto I am trying, and I am good at stretching my definitions, to read it as just observation, but it’s not working. In the spirit of suggesting decisions to others, I humbly suggest that you make peace with the way most commenters read what you wrote: as an evaluation and a call to action. In my opinion, it reads the best as such, and the worst as an observation. I tried both ways.

As for giving me advice about deleting my account, gee, thanks. “We have no time for distractions from our purpose..” I’m stunned. Seriously. You sound as if the group on Twitter is united towards the great cause of….what exactly? Improving student learning? Or getting every one to sign up for special wiki projects?

And what decisions for others am I making? I’m not the one trying to standardize tagging. Go back and read the post (and I’m not sure you did). Its about over the top self-promotion, coolcat.