Earlier this week I was beginning to feel the Twitter burn-out as despite the obvious value in being a part of a global learning community, the site is so distracting and time-consuming - often there are just way too many excellent tips, links and amazing articles to read and as I now teach 30 contact hours a week, some of which are in blended learning classes, write ELT materials, a blog, run a blogger's group,
yadda yaddda...I came to the conclusion that twitter should only be looked at at specific times of the day and not be on
all the time and
it's defintely not on my phone.
The problem is that I'm followed by about 1500 people and follow around 1000 in return so filtering through the noise became a surprising issue: the stream looks
very, very different from when you are following 100 - 300.
Along with the wonderful teachers I've met online, in the last 8 months or so, my stream includes random networkers, motivational speakers, the "pushing my products" people, the
narcissists of whom there are so many, even in education (they call it passion) - so the question of how to effectively concentrate on those I respect without spending a whole bunch of time
unfollowing people popped up.
I set up groups on Tweetdeck (probably like most of you) which was handy however kept missing the tweets by those who post outside of my timeline.
I'm about quality, not quantity, so how to work it while sticking to my
Dunbar?
I found the solution!Although most of what I've read regarding
Twitter lists in the past few days has been negative, the social media experts decrying them and wondering whether or not some people will end up feeling left out if they're not listed, I think they missed the point.
The lists aren't about who follows you.They're about who you follow.
They're an easy way of cutting through the noise to focus on specific groups of people within your niche community so you can develop better relationships with them.
My take on the PLN (Personal Learning Network), is that it is about creating valuable,
personal, long lasting professional friendships
not about adding long lists of random readers, numbers/followers/group-members etc, etc but instead focusing on people you expect to meet at conferences, trainers whose presentations you hope to attend, authors whose books you've read or want to read, educators whose websites and blogs you visit regularly; people you want to learn from and collaborate with, teachers to share and bounce off ideas with.
Creating Twitter Lists isn't easy!To effectively, efficiently create your own list, I'd recommend doing what I did :
I searched my
own twitter id (leaving off the @sign to see the full conversation) and also checked
backtweet (good for website owners and bloggers) for those I communicate with most frequently, who chat with me back, who ReTweet my work and put these names into a spreadsheet.
I also looked at who I haven't talked to very often but whom I really wish I did.
Then decided what categories they fell into and from that created my lists:
and One thing I truly like about the lists is that they aren't static in the way the
tweepl lists were - so I can continue to add/subtract to these as the months and years go by.
Another feature is that you can follow the lists of other teachers - handy when someone you know comes up with a category you hadn't thought of and want to monitor also.
I've even made a smaller, private group of
"faves" so now, signing off this post and glancing at the tweets from my friends, spanning throughout the entire week, I'm newly invigorated by the potentiality of Twitter to develop as a language professional.
What have
your experiences with lists been like, did you find a simple way to create your own? Do you have a tip to share?
Are you worried, like the social-media-experts, about being left off a list?
Have you hit the Twitter-burn-out and came up with a plan too?
Let me know your thoughts.
Best,
Karenne
Useful links related to this posting:
ELT Guide to TwitterThe Business of Twitter
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