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Social networking changes everything
Last week a history teacher colleague told me she wouldn’t waste time with Twitter because it was stupid. My resulting tirade about PLNs clearly shocked her. The kids I interviewed in my social networking focus groups told me they didn’t get it.
Over the past two days Twitter has more than proved itself.
Andrew Sullivan in his Daily Dish blog (The Atlantic) describes what is happening as Twitter’s finest hour and he urges the service to rethink tonight’s scheduled maintenance:
All I can ask is that they reconsider if they can. Taking Twitter down when it is the critical tool for organizing the resistance in Iran is Ahmadinejad’s dream. This event has been Twitter’s finest hour. Don’t spoil it. They need you.
If my students were still in school, I’d insist they keep up in new ways. I’d have them search Twitter with the hash tag #iranelection to see a steady stream of on-the-spot reporting that include urgent pleas to get the word out, tweets that lead to uploaded images and videos from other social networking tools like Flickr and YouTube. (This stuff is raw and is probably best for a high school audience.)
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The speed at which people are tweeting is truly incredible.
Buffy Hamilton pulled together a wonderful NetVibes page filled with feeds on the election and resulting violence.
Over the past two days, social networking tools are proving themselves as tools for us to share and discern truth.
Isn’t it an irony that many of our schools do not allow this truth in their own doors?
Update: On Twitter’s decision to reschedule maintenance.
Update 2: Iran, Twitter, and The American Information Elite
Filed under: Uncategorized
About Joyce Valenza
Joyce is an Assistant Professor of Teaching at Rutgers University School of Information and Communication, a technology writer, speaker, blogger and learner. Follow her on Twitter: @joycevalenza
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