Group Microblog (Continued)
Beyond the basic tool
Extending Twitter
Tweetdeck
The quantity of information you may encounter when participating in a group microblog can be overwhelming. Twitter offers limitations when it comes to organizing this flow of information. Tweetdeck provides an approach that offers control through catagorization.Tweetdeck is a software program (client) allowing a user to access a Twitter feed. Input coming to your Twitter account ends up displayed within panels (columns). There are default panets for your general feed, replies and direct messages.
As a user, you can also establish panels for specific searches. You make use of the magnifying glass icon to enter a search and the results show up in a new panel. You can attempt to locate searches on a topic, but I find this feature of greatest value when following the Tweets containing a specific hashtag. For example, those attending a conference often use a designated tag (e.g., ISTE15) to identify tweets they have generated related to that conference. Some educators now participate in what have been labelled edchats. They login at a designated time and respond to a series of questions. Each question and the responses are identified by a hashtag. For example, I sometimes follow the weekly discussion tagged as #ndedchat. When I search the Twitter feed for #ndedchat in Tweetdeck, I see all of the questions and responses in one panel even though I do not follow all of those who participate in this chat.
Other group microblogging platforms
There are other services that qualify as group microblogs. In my opinion, Twitter has some obvious limitations (e.g., the focus on text). It seems very possible that the popularity of Twitter prevents users from exploring options. This happens because the value of a service results from a combination of the potential of the tool and access to the community using that tool. Even when aware of superior options, individuals hesitate to move to a better tool because the network to which they belong is more valuable than new capabilities. This is clearly a challenge when using a group microblog platform as an important component of a personal learning network. The same limitation would not apply when selecting a platform for a classroom.
Microblog resources:
Twitter
Tweetdeck (Twitter client)
Plurk
Youth Voices (Twitter feed)