Twittering Teachers?

I'm not sure what I think about this. Apparently, Twitter, a micro-blogging site, is a growing source of information for the educational community. In 140 characters or less, you share your questions, ideas, observations, and general thoughts, which are then shared with your "followers", who can respond, send messages to you directly, or create their own posts for you to follow.

This is strange. I've been on Twitter for a few months, ever since Dooce talked about it back in March. And so far, I've used it as a place to write those things you can never really say out loud, or funny thoughts I have when there's no one around to share them with. Out of context, they're usually even funnier. Often, they're inside jokes or slightly inappropriate. It's almost like a conversation where you don't care if the other person responds. You're saying what you think when you think it, and throw it out there for the universe to read. If I'm going to use this for following other educators, I might need to be more cautious in the future. Though, I just read through every thing I've written there, and there's really nothing that bad.

It's one of those things that's an exciting idea, because it's so easy to check from the computer or the iPhone. You can share ideas and those quick thoughts you might not remember to post about later. But is it professional?

I agree with the idea that it's another good way to develop that national or world-wide community of teachers - sharing ideas and feeling connected to those outside your school or district. But even for those using it to be part of the education community, it's still a place to post things that are more personal then we normally allow on our websites.

I'm on the fence on this one. I'll follow some of the people mentioned in the article and see where it leads me. And start watching what I say in my Tweets.