140 Characters Or Less

Twitter’s clouds are an inter­est­ing brand­ing choice for a ser­vice that asks us to squeeze our thoughts into tiny 140-character install­ments. Clouds, like tweets, are so much more than they appear to be. They are open to inter­pre­ta­tion. We see things in clouds, in their shapes, in their move­ments, that have noth­ing at all to do with their phys­i­cal embod­i­ment as water drops. I’ve never seen a cloud that didn’t look like some­thing else:

Ham­let: Do you see yon­der cloud, that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polo­nius: By th’ mass, and ’tis like a camel, indeed.
Ham­let: Methinks, it is like a weasel.
Polo­nius: It is backed like a weasel.
Ham­let: Or like a whale.
Polo­nius: Very like a whale.

Now, some of us may see more than oth­ers, but we are all relent­less mean­ing mak­ers. The world around us is not a given, as they say, but rather it is con­structed. In Twit­ter that con­struc­tion relies on 140-character build­ing blocks. Tweets, like clouds, are sug­ges­tions, inti­ma­tions, that drift by, and some­times they project the deeper con­cerns of the fol­lower who reads them. I’ve never seen a tweet that didn’t look like some­thing else. For example:

Observe the signs: the lone tweet, the extended time lapsed since post­ing, no fol­lowup, the default avatar. The tone is con­fi­dent and crotch­ety, methinks. It sug­gests that, against their bet­ter judg­ment, the author fell vic­tim to the peak of inflated expec­ta­tions, then, at mid-tweet, with bet­ter judg­ment restored, fell into the trough of dis­il­lu­sion­ment. The bal­lis­tic pro­gres­sion through the stages of the hype cycle hints at long-time exper­tise, long enough for evolved cyn­i­cism, brief enough to have sus­tained hope. Could this be an aban­doned eduTwit­ter account? If tweets are like clouds, this one says there is rain is in the fore­cast. Stay out of the rain it warns. If you are seri­ous about technology-supported learn­ing envi­ron­ments (and I am! Iam!), then Twit­ter is all wet.

Of course, I grant you, some of us may see more in these tweets than others.

TheMime’s twit­ter style is more detached, but equally jaded. The author tweets a sin­gle ellipse, and only an ellipse, every cou­ple of days. They have been doing this since Novem­ber, and have attracted over 5,000 fol­low­ers.* The tone is whim­si­cal, the deliv­ery reli­able. You may hope for more, they sug­gest, and you will get more … of the same. More of the same? Oh yes, I know this pat­tern. It is the one that seems to emerge when­ever edu­ca­tors start to use dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in their prac­tice. The pat­tern looks some­thing like this:

Most dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies are orig­i­nally devel­oped for or adapted by researchers or com­mer­cial inter­ests. But it is fair to say that teach­ers and train­ers are among the most enthu­si­as­tic and inno­v­a­tive adopters. We all want to embrace the promise to enhance the expe­ri­ences of our stu­dents or improve learn­ing out­comes. Many of us share our expe­ri­ences. The online lit­er­a­ture about the use of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in edu­ca­tion is burst­ing with enthu­si­as­tic accounts of what was done, why it was done, how it worked, what impact it had on stu­dents, and what chal­lenges it posed for teach­ers. In fact, this gen­eros­ity formed my expec­ta­tions about Twit­ter long before I set up an account. But read more closely, and you will see that much of the dis­cus­sion is not about any­thing new or trans­for­ma­tional; rather it is about the recur­rent, per­sis­tent issues in edu­ca­tion. There are notable excep­tions, but most of these exper­i­ments with dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies feel as if they are just that — sim­ple exper­i­ments with tech­nol­ogy. These are our ellipses. Some impor­tant aspects remain mostly unchanged: the under­ly­ing design of the cur­ricu­lum, the pur­poses and means of assess­ing, and the imbal­ance of power between teacher/trainer/facilitator and student/trainee/learner. There are rea­sons, of course, why we do not cap­i­tal­ize on the poten­tial of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to change the rela­tion­ship between stu­dents and learn­ing. Still, I can’t help but feel some­what dis­heart­ened that poten­tially trans­for­ma­tional tech­nolo­gies are often used in some­what pre­dictable ways.

If tweets are clouds, is the long term fore­cast is over­cast and unchanged? I turned to the twit­ter­sphere for fel­low­ship and fore­cast. Is there any­thing new under the sun?, I tweeted. Appar­ently yes, says Dave Fer­gu­son:

What appeals to me about dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies is that they throw into con­trast any dif­fer­ences of opin­ion we may hold about their use. Vari­a­tions in the pat­tern become imme­di­ately evi­dent. For exam­ple, I don’t think I’ve ever been inclined to com­pare tech­nolo­gies and clouds before Twit­ter. Doing so reveals my under­ly­ing con­struc­tivist assump­tions about edu­ca­tion and I how go about achiev­ing them. Tweets are like clouds. In 140 char­ac­ters or less, I can see estab­lished par­a­digms and am free to inter­pret alter­na­tive views. That’s a lot of trans­for­ma­tional power packed into an edutweet, and that’s where I see sun peak­ing behind the clouds.

* And more now that TheMime has been fea­tured on Boing Boing. If you still have doubts that tweets are ideal fod­der for mean­ing mak­ing, check out the comments.