Blog about Twitter

After using Twitter for the first time I found getting use to the limit set on the amount of characters you can have in a single message to be difficult. I was aware of this limitation before I used Twitter but found that it was hard to condense what you were trying to say in only 140 characters. Of course the whole point of the website is to provide short messages and I’d imagine that I’d get use to it eventually with continued use.  Because of this limitation Twitter discussions aren’t as in depth as a Blackboard or in-class discussion.  It can also be confusing to follow a conversation if a person did not reply properly or re-tweet an old message. Blackboard organizes messages in threads like a basic forum so it is easy to follow the conversation.  One of the advantages of a Twitter discussion is the fact that most people have a smart phone or internet access so they can be notified of a reply, Blackboard does not have an application that I am aware of that would allow someone to receive instant notification so you may get a late reply or no reply at all when using Blackboard. In my opinion Twitter is also more user friendly than Blackboard so besides formulating what you are trying to say in 140 characters it can be easier to use than Blackboard. Ultimately both Twitter and Blackboard lack face to face interaction found in an in-class discussion. An in-class discussion allows people to better understand what someone is saying because you can directly get feedback and ask questions to a person. You don’t have to wait for someone to reply or to get notification. An in-class discussion also offers more clarity by allowing you to see and hear the person’s emotions; It may be possible to misunderstand a person’s tone through text but you always know someone’s tone when they are talking to you.  It is with this reasoning that I believe an in-class discussion is the best option, when left to choose between Twitter and Blackboard I think it can go either way based on how much depth you want to add to the conversation.