Mark Carls’ Blog

From the very beginning when I was shown Twitter at the NYSCATE conference out in Rochester, NY this past November, I had this problem, of “Who do I decide to follow?”. I had never seen Twitter and had a hard time wrapping my mind around it. I just thought I’d get all these weirdos (is that a word?) making statements like, “just farted” or “lsdkfjdlkjsldkjfdsklj”……. wait a minute, I do get the latter from @tclarkeee …….>ZING>!

This is what I did to get started.

First of all I talked with Rick Weinberg (@rickweinberg) and Tim Clarke and got their Twitter names, then I used Will Richardson’s (@willrich45) who was presenting at NYSCATE and used he was the one who first showed me Twitter, as well as ustream, which is a blog post for another day! I looked at a few of these education leaders and saw who they followed. I probably picked up 10 from Will Richardson, (who limits who he follows, but has a ton following him), some from David Jakes (@djakes) and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (@snbeach), and maybe a few more from that initial conference
To be honest my first 2-3 months, I just lurked around searching for good people to follow and then basically checking out their links to sites. I’ve tried to increase my voice more and just like the quiet kid in the classroom, it feels a little easier to use that voice on the internet in some of these Web 2.0 websites.
For me, the important part in deciding who to follow on Twitter is to consider, “Is this person someone I’d like to learn from” (YES, I would use that terminology, I learn a great deal from Twitter!)

1st: I look at their brief bio in the top right corner. What are their interests? Do they have a website? If so, I almost always click on that (usually a blog) and I look at recent posts and responses. Is there anyone I know responding to them…..I hope no one does that to me, I get few responses to this blog!

2nd: I check out their previous tweets to Twitter. Are they putting links on there to educational sites and other Web 2.0 tools out there, or are they talking about getting wasted this weekend over at Lucky Chucky’s house!?!?! Not that I have anything against the tweeter or Chucky Lucky. I actually like to see a little bit of personal stuff thrown in there and communication between others on a personal level. However, if it’s all lowercase and “wu dog!” or “hau 2 day….(see I’m not real good at this new shorthand), I hope you get my point, I don’t need that….except from @tclarkeee!

3rd: I’ve gotten LUCKY! Building my social network has been sometimes exhausting, but often a very rewarding task. It’s like that math problem that takes you an hour to solve, but then when you solve it, you get this incredible, re-confirming feeling that, “I can do it!”. With the internet (Twitter and this blog), I get this feeling that I am out there and starting to connect with people.

Any thoughts? I’ll send this link out on Twitter and we’ll see what happens. I’m not saying that I have this down to a science, I still don’t understand Twitter completely…… well, when it’s up and running…..>ZING>, but I do appreciate the feedback and advice I’ve gotten.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 6:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized and Tagged bio, blog, Chucky Lucky, classroom, collaboration, community, David Jakes, djakes, education, feedback, internet, jing, leader, Mark Carls, mcarls, New York, NY, NYSCATE, post, Rick Weinberg, rickweinberg, Rochester, screen capture, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, snbeach, social network, social networking, tclarkeee, technology, Tim Clarke, tweet, Twitter, voice, web 2.0, website, Will Richardson, willrich45 You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.