So last class we talked about everyone's impressions of Twitter. I have to say I was surprised at how many people shared my skepticism about Twitter. SI students are supposed to be on top of all this new technology to the extreme, right? And for the most part, we are, and I'm sure a lot of people at SI do effectively use Twitter for professional development purposes. But overall people in SI 643 just seem really unsure how to do so, and I can't say I blame them. In particular, I wasn't surprised that people were annoyed at the degree to which people's personal and professional lives intersected on Twitter in ways that were annoying to the person who wants to use the service for professional purposes.
I have to say that though the tools we talked about in class for making Twitter less information overload-ish seemed interesting, I'm still not sure that they'd make Twitter a worthwhile use of my professional time. As we looked at Hootsuite and Google Reader integration and whatever else, I just really couldn't imagine myself ever doing this. I was particular struck by Kristin saying how she could lose so much time just to keeping up with this sort of professional networking without realizing it. I already know I can lose hours of time in my personal life to social networking and blogs (and when you're in grad school, "personal life" means "time to do homework," so that doesn't work out so well), and the thought of the same thing happening when I should be doing work that I'm actually getting paid for-- even when said social networking/blogging/whatever relates to the work I'm doing-- is a little terrifying. And I already know how much time people lose due to email processing alone in work environments. Email is unavoidable, and of course the benefits and convenience of using it generally outweigh the annoyances. But for everything else, is it really worth it? For some people, you can probably manage it just fine. For me personally, probably not.
On the other hand, I see the value of Twitter in professional development and networking in general-- the whole professional learning network thing. But how do you get a balance between that and your "actual" work? Obviously, each enhances the other, but it's tough to justify spending too much time on the former to the detriment of the latter. I suppose figuring this out is part of our obligation as professionals, but Web 2.0 makes these things a little more complicated, doesn't it? Overall, a lot of really interesting reflections on professional development and where to go from here as we close out a very interesting semester.
I also was surprised by how many people were also skeptical of twitter, but i think that we are both making two big assumptions: that every popular technology resource is a useful resource and that just because we are in SI, we have to jump on all of the web-based bandwagons out there. Twitter is popular, but that doesn't mean that it is the most effective way of making connections for everyone.
ReplyDeleteThat's sort of the same point I initially wanted to make, but I got sidetracked talking about other things: it's definitely true that we shouldn't just jump on any bandwagon out there, and it's to our credit that we don't and instead are analytic about how we approach these tools. Certainly Twitter can be great for some people, as its popularity shows, but it's probably not the thing for me.
DeleteHow to balance your formal and informal professional development/networking activities (whichever tools you use) is an interesting question. I agree that keeping up with sources like blogs and twitter should definitely not take precedence over one's professional obligations, and I can imagine that keeping up with trends in the professional sphere could take a significant chunk of personal time.. I wonder how people handle that balance.
ReplyDelete