OK, here's my short follow up post as promised in my last post on the recent AITD conference!
Let's get to the point, I went to the conference primarily because of sessions keynotes and workshops on the use of social media in learning - a real interest of mine. (as you saw in my last post I did enjoy the conference!) I was however prepared to use Twitter during the conference, I've followed other people at conferences related to learning and have always found something of interest to me, following the tweets isn't as good as being there but the tweets give a taste and some ideas and links to follow up on. Throughout the conference I did the same thing, tweeting snippets of each keynote and workshop I attended and providing links to articles and information mentioned by speakers.
I decided to use the hashtag #aitd
I thought it a good guess that this would be the 'official' tag for the conference. Quickly I found that there were others using the same tag but guess how many? I'll give you a clue, there'd have been about 250+ people. Maybe you'd guess that 20 people tweeted, perhaps even 40 people.
Well, in a word, no! All up there would have been 6 people. Two of the tweeters were themselves speaking at the conference on the use of social media - so you would have expected them to Tweet. Just a little surprised was I!
Why is this the case? Doesn't Twitter aid learning?
I know that Tweeting helped me learn more at the conference. Following the few people who did Tweet brought me their perspectives on sessions, often challenging my own views, isn't that learning?
Social media won't make the world of traditional learning fall down around us, however I do think that there is a distrust of some new technologies. To me it's simple, I learn in workshops, I learn from TV, I learn from working with other people. And do you know what? I learn every time new information and ideas enter my head. Here's the thing, my head doesn't care where the new stuff comes from, it just wants more of it - even if it's via Twitter!
