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App Fusion: Twaining in Twitter
Moveover, brick and mortar classrooms. Step aside, digital contentaggregates. We may have discounted this tool as an e-Learningdelivery platform in the past but it refuses to go down for thecount. The tool I am referring to is Twitter.
Sure,you use it. Sure, you know the value of the backchannel. You may eventweet 100 times a day, but have you ever imagined Twitter as aplatform to deliver e-Learning? Some of you may be reading thissitting on the edge of your 140-character limit and saying, “Twitteris many things, but it is nota delivery platform.” However, Twitter’s new interface creates aunique presentation platform for storing and sharing learningcontent.
Beforewe start, let’s clarify. This isn’t a methodology for everytraining intervention. I am not suggesting you abandon your authoringtools or LMS’s. To the contrary, I am suggesting you expand yourtoolkit to include Twitter as a delivery platform — asappropriate. Accordingto TechCrunch, Twitter COO Dick Costolo reported to theConversational Media Summit (June, 2010) that Twitter has 190 millionvisitors per month generating 65 million Tweets a day. The articlefurther reported Costolo saying, “Most users don’t Tweet at all,but rather use Twitter as a consumption medium.” There are tworelevant extrapolations here. First, chances are there is apopulation of your learners that consumes from this grocer of socialcontent. Second, those same learners are waiting for you to put yourcontent on the shelf for their consumption.
Twitter tools and tactics
Thereare a few elements of the new Twitter interface that enable you tobuild a course. The Favorites tab is key to designing a course thatyou would like to have remain indefinitely. Your favorite tweets(self-generated or outsourced) are stored in this tab on your ProfilePage. This tool is critical to organizing the delivery of yourTraining. The concept works in the Timeline of your Home and Profilepage as well, but there are many variables there that move contentaround. I prefer the Favorites tab for a static course that onlychanges at the designer’s will.
Media Icons
The Media Icons are the nextcritical element of the course design. These icons are barelynoticeable to the less-than-savvy user of the interface. Tools suchas Tweetdeck and Hootsuite keep most of us from using the Twitterinterface to Tweet. Therefore there may be many users who neverrealized that these tools exist. There are three Media Icons:
The Video Link: Again, I am taking a liberty with its title. This icon allows the hyperlink embedded in the tweet to play a video in a media player on the Twitter interface. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1. The Video Link in Twitter is easily overlooked.
Photo Link: Similar to the Video Link but the Photo Link displays a photograph from the hyperlink embedded in the tweet. (See Figure 2.) The photograph is also displayed in the media player.
Figure 2. The Photo Link displays a photo from within the tweet.
GeoTagging Link: This link displays tagged locations like Four Square. (See Figure 3.) A map or some graphic is displayed in the media player.
Figure 3. The GeoTagging Link gives access to a map or other graphic.
Onceyou have “Favorited” your content, your course is done. YourFavorites tab has its own URL so you can tweet, e-mail, post it toyour Web page, or use whatever method you want, in order to broadcastto your learners that the course is compiled and ready. I’vecreated a Training Course on this topic athttps://twitter.com/#!/ISD20/favorites. The course demonstrates the tactics and use of the tools discussedin this article.
Compiling a course in Twitter
The process of compiling a courseon the Twitter interface is fairly simple. However, there are fewtips which could facilitate the process more efficiently:
Use a practice or dummy Twitter account to practice composing the course. This saves you from sending out tweets that may conflict with your tweeting strategy. When the course is ready, save it in the account you want to go live in.
As stated earlier, the Favorites tab is the best place to store a course that won’t disappear amongst your frequent tweets.
When moving tweets from your timeline to your Favorites tab, be sure to do it in reverse order. This way the 1st tweet the learner reads is the first step in your course. Although I haven’t been able to confirm this, Twitter may place Favorites in the order of the dates they were tweeted.
Include a few tweets that provide instruction, especially the first tweet. This tweet should direct the user to the next step.
Go synchronous by using Justin.TV or Ustream.com
Will the revolution be tweeted?
Twittercan be more than just a backchannel communicator. The new interface,although overlooked, provides a powerful presentation platform thatmay be appropriate for some of your training. For those trainers thatmust resort to “guerilla” tactics due to restrictive budgets,this could be a liberating step to your revolution.
