Twitter: Is it really all it's really cracked up to be?

I created my Twitter last year - I decided I needed one if my dad already had one. I only posted on it a few times because I felt like compared to Facebook, it was useless. I had 3 followers (one being my dad) and honestly felt like I had nothing good to say. I'll be honest, I haven't updated it since CEP started. Who cares what I have to say in 140 characters? Can I even think of anything to say in that few words?

I think that is one of the major drawbacks to Twitter; I feel like every word needs to be carefully chosen because you're allowed so few. Who wants to spend time contemplating every letter choice on something that's supposed to make your life easier? I would rather blog on here than limit my thoughts to a limited amount of characters.

Although I will admit, there's a very good chance I don't know how to properly use it, so I've been doing some research on the benefits of it - especially for teachers. Onlinecollegedegrees.org posted a great article on Tips for Teachers on Twitter that I've been reading in my spare time. All the articles on "Twitter for Beginners" (and there are quite a few) were helpful, especially in teaching how to use the @ for replies or "d" for direct messages (which I didn't know you could do on Twitter). There is also a large list of articles specifically for Educators that I would highly recommend. One tip that I had never thought of is that eventually if enough teachers join, Twitter can become a very helpful way to network.

I'm a Language Arts major, so I was tossing around ideas of how to use Twitter in my classroom. One idea I had was to post a word that my students most likely had never heard of and have them look it up on their own, coming to class knowing the definition and how to use it in a sentence, etc. It would also be an easy way to suggest outside reading for class, or pose questions that they should think about before coming to class. As long as all my students got into the habit of checking it every day, it could be very successful (and fast) at getting my suggestions out there.

I believe that Twitter could be very helpful and fun to use, as long as I actually had people to follow and vice versa. Right now it doesn't appear to be very beneficial because there's nothing happening and I feel like I'm talking to myself. Maybe it will prove to be helpful once I begin teaching!