Tweetdeck_install_08

I am a member of a number of online communities. Some of them I am more active in than others. While it is very easy to become a member of an online community, I’ve found successfully learning in a online collaborative environment is actually very complex. When I analyze all the social networking communities I belong to, from fantasy sports leagues, to FaceBook and LinkedIn, discussion forums, any number of Nings, Plurk and many others, the online community I gain the most from has to be my Twitter network.

In an attempt to uncover how and why my Twitterverse seems to dominate my online collaboration time and learning, I’ve decided to apply a set of criteria laid out by Palloff and Pratt (2005) to help me determine if my PLN tool of choice is a successful collaborative online community. Palloff and Pratt offer a number of elements that they suggest contribute to a successful collaborative online community;

  • people,
  • shared purpose,
  • guidelines,
  • technology,
  • collaborative learning,
  • reflective practice and
  • social presence

People

According to the official Twitter FAQ, “Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives. Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away. Curious people can make friends.”

With Twitter, you pick the people you want to “Follow.” These individuals become your friends, or members of the online community. Your Twitter page is then populated with the tweets your friends send out. The reason Twitter is successful for me is that I only use it to follow quality people. I don’t follow everyone who follows me. I selectively follow and unfollow individual tweeps who are tweeting quality content over quantity content. I make sure to pick people who have the same professional backgrounds, goals and interests as I do. Occasionally I follow an individual or two have similar political or recreational interests, but I don’t let these type dominate my Twitter timeline.

Shared Purpose

I mainly use Twitter to follow and communicate with other educational technology advocates. In turn, I’m followed by other ed tech enthusiasts, This connection to something meaningful and important to my life really helps to generate a genuine shared purpose. We are all using Twitter to collaborate and share tips, tricks, resources and links that will help each other in our jobs and lives.

Guidelines

This is probably the loosest area of my Twitter online community. Of course, Twitter has an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that all users agree to and sets some general guidelines for what type of material you can post. However, there is also an unofficial Twitter etiquette that most people follow. Rather than recreate the wheel here, I’m going to refer you to this blog post by Julie Niesen, Some basic thoughts on Twitter Etiquette, that does a great job of explaining Twitter etiquette.

Technology

Technology is the driving force behind the social connection of my Twitterverse. The Twitter community conversations almost always occur asynchronously online. Ocassionally, a IM or chat room type of conversation occurs, but I have not found this to always be the case. To me, part of the charm of Twitter is that the conversation is there for you if you want to actively pursue an on going exchange, but it is alwao sitting there waiting for you when you are ready to more passively consume it. Following @reply exchanges and contributed hyperlinks is a new form of communication that I often benefit from, but never really directly communicate with another person.

To enhance the capabilities of the Twitter, many people use a number of 3rd party technologies that integrate with the online service. For example, I use an Adobe Air app called TweetDeck to track all of my friends tweets. This software also allows me to favorite tweets, set up groups and reply directly (privately) to my Twitter friends. The Twitter website provides some of these options, but TweetDeck as a technology tool certainly enhances my collaborative experience. TweetDeck also allows me to post simultaneously to my FaceBook account and my Twitter account and follow both sets of friends.

Collaborative learning

As I stated in Shared Purpose, my Twitter online community is all about collaborative learning. I have surrounded myself with people who are dedicated to contributing and learning in an open educational arena. If you are not about that, then I normally don’t waste my time following you on Twitter. @rainwilson may be the sole exception to this generic rule. Person-to-person interaction is definitely what Twitter is about for me. The use of @replies directly facilitates this type of interaction. Back in March, I blogged about an online conversation I had on Twitter that led to a collaborative learning experience. How we should teach writing re: #writing 21. Additional info about how I learn collaboratively on Twitter can be found in this post from my blog.

Reflective practice

Does Twitter promote transformational learning? This is a question that is often debated in the educational technology community and I would argue, yes. Twitter has totally revolutionized the way I find information. By being connected to an entire network of dedicated educators, I am constantly coming in contact with peer-reviewed articles that deepen my understanding of educational technology. The links that my Twitter friends provide me almost inevitably lead me to other links, which lead to more links and so on and so forth.

Where I use to rely on a library search to find credible sources of information, I now find myself tweeting out my questions to my online network and watching their suggestions and expertise roll in. Twitter really has become an extremely important part of my life, an invaluable resource and a source of constant and instant connectivity to a community of experts who challenge me to become a better educator on a daily basis!

Social Presence

For the past 6 months, I’ve been using a service called TwitPic.com to attach images to the tweets I post. Here is an example. And another. Adding photos and videos to the conversation helps to enhance my social presence within the online community. It allows my Twitter friends to get to know a little more about me both professionally and personally as well as bring a human element into the conversation.

Further enhancing my social presence online is another piece of technology I (and other tweeps) integrate into the Twitter community called Qik. The Qik mobile app allows me to stream live video from my mobile phone straight to the web. Each time (if I choose) I start to stream video from my BlackBerry Storm, a tweet is sent out to my Twitter followers inviting them to watch whatever it is I have going on. You can read more about Qik.com and see an example in this post from my blog.

Conclusion

So, what, if anything does this tell us? Is Twitter an effective online collaborative community? I think that by Palloff and Pratt’s standards, Twitter definitely is on the mark for my learning purposes. That’s not to say that other online communities are not effective, however from a personal standpoint, I do not find myself more actively engaged in any of them, as compared to Twitter. In the quest for lifelong learning, an it is crucial to find a community of people to share an grow with. Increasingly, I’m finding that my collaborative engine is driven by the online environment and if I am going to be active in an online community, then it will need to provide substance in each of Palloff and Pratt’s seven elements. That’s what Twitter does for me. What about you?

Additional Twitter resources

http://twitter.pbworks.com/

Photo Credit: Tweetdeck_install_08 by Narisa, on Flickr