Nursing Education 2.0: Twitter & Tweets. Can You Post a Nugget of Knowledge in 140 Characters or Less?

Abstract

Can You Post Nugget of Knowledge in 140 Characters or Less? AS YOU KNOW, I rely on many resources to write this column, including various blogs on technologies in higher education and my faithful resources from Educause. I am most interested in tools that facilitate communication, collaboration, social networking, and learning. In the communication area, digital immigrants pride themselves in using email, participating in asynchronous discussions, and sometimes even venturing into the world of online chats. But to digital natives, in particular is so yesterday, or, as stated in the Chronicle of Higher Education, email is for old (1). Digital natives tend to communicate in the moment using IM (instant messaging), text messaging, blogging, expressing themselves on social networking sites, and now sending tweets. NO, I DID NOT MAKE UP THE WORD. A tweet, posting of 140 characters or less, is the mainstay of an online application called Twitter. This product, first introduced in 2006, is communication tool aimed at digital natives. According to Educause Learning Initiative (2): is an online application that is part blog, part social networking site, part cell phone/IM tool.... Wikipedia defines Twitter as a free social networking and microblogging service that allows users to send updates (or tweets; text-based posts...) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or third-party application such as Twitterrific (3). Digital natives can meet the creator and hear about the idea behind micro-blogging in video interview with Biz Stone (http://uk.intruders.tv/Interview-with-Twitter-co-founder-Biz-Stone_al33.html). Digital immigrants may prefer to read about micro-blogging and Twitter at the PBS Media Shift site (www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/05/digging_deepertwitter_ founders.html). Just so you do not think I am crazy, the New York Times, the BBC, and Al Jazeera are all experimenting with Twitter, as are political figures John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. So, if you want to communicate with and update circle of your closest friends, family members, research colleagues, clinical preceptors, or students, then you might want to explore Twitter. But you must be succinct; 140 characters is not lot of space. So How Does It Work? After setting up an account (http://twitter.com), establish profile and determine if you want your tweets to be public (appear on pubic timeline page) or protected (open only to people connected to your profile). You can invite people to your account. Then, as your friends connect, their tweets and yours will appear on your Twitter page. To do this, you can use the web or connect to your instant messaging account or mobile device (your phone or your PDA). How Is Twitter Used in Higher Education? A quick look at various higher education blogs indicates several ways to use Twitter with your students. One idea is to communicate with students about the great ideas - the nuggets of knowledge - we glean while attending conferences (2). (I like this idea as I often attend informatics conferences.) For example, I can send the entire class quick note about speakers or talks they may want to visit later or tell them about specific ideas I got from talk (that would also serve as reminder to me after the conference). I also like the notion of using Twitter like instant messaging to tell students about an important change in plans (class is cancelled/there is change in their practicum sites) or to communicate with large group of colleagues, like preceptors, who may not have their readily accessible while working. On the PBS teachers' blog, there is good example of how teacher uses Twitter with middle school students to teach collaborative writing skills. Each student is limited to 140 characters or less and there can be only 140 posts to tell the story. The collaborative writing assignment is based on the Twittory framework (http:// twittories. …