This post is winding up here thanks to Ben Loeb, a Marketing student at American University. AU students have founded a Social Media Club, which, as you can imagine, I’m a huge fan of.
Anyhoodle, the AU-SMCEDU website had a great short article up this morning entitled “3 Things Students Should Know about Twitter.” The article was great… my favorite point was that Twitter is not a distraction. I’ve said this over and over — it’s a tool that can actually help with your studies; so don’t be afraid to join and start engaging with folks who share similar interests!
You can access the full article via the link above, but here are the three points Ben made:
- Twitter is not just for celebrities
- Twitter consists of millions of people most of whom are not celebrities. Twitter is a tool that allows people to communicate, and it can allow everyday people to communicate with celebrities. However, the main idea behind Twitter is that it is an open dialogue. Twitter allows one person to communicate with thousands! You can share your feelings, ideas, and aspirations, and surprisingly tons of people are actually interested and ready to respond. Twitter is a great way to find information; there are millions of people to serve as resources.
- Twitter does not care about your breakfast
- Twitter is about what is going on in the world, not what you ate for breakfast. While some people use Twitter to share food reviews and their opinions of foods, Twitter is about the big picture not about your bowl of cereal this morning. Conversations on Twitter mirror what is going on in the real world; for example the Egyptian rebellions are being covered in the #Cairo hashtag. When someone in Egypt wants to share their story with the outside world or a news source breaks a story, people can find this information in the hashtag, which serves as a database.
- Twitter is not a distraction
- Twitter is not a distraction. If people are having trouble applying themselves, it is their problem. Twitter should not be detracting from class discussions because if people are tweeting something like that then they have already removed themselves from the conversation. Twitter is a tool for engaging students and encouraging discussion. Twitter allows people to express their opinions and continue debate outside the classroom. People who use Twitter to avoid paying attention in class are doing themselves a disservice by not listening, but what does it say about the class if the professor can’t keep a students attention?
If you’ve read anything in Nicole’s Corner, a lot of this should sound very familiar!
Another good read: Social Media Do’s and Do Not’s
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