From the Chronicle of Higher Education
By Jeffrey R. Young
Twitter is quickly becoming a global faculty lounge. Sure, it's easy to waste a lot of time on the Internet-based microblogging service reading mundane details about people's days. But you can also pick up some great higher-education gossip, track down colleagues to collaborate with, or get advice on how to improve your teaching or research.
I decided to talk to some of the most active and dedicated Twitter users in higher education to find out what they get out of it.... The final selections are far from scientific, but they do represent a range of disciplines, job titles, and approaches. Not surprisingly, many of these Twitter-happy college folks study new media or the impact of Twitter on education.So here are 10 college Twitterers worth following, beginning with the most active....
3. Howard Rheingold, a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley teaching virtual communities and social media [Info 190]. Tweet: "http://www.stickam.com/ multiple live video chat windows looks interesting, may try with my classes"
http://twitter.com/hrheingold
Followers: 8,644. Posts: 6,189.
Mr. Rheingold has been a pioneer in online communities since the 1980s (before most people knew there was such a thing), and he remains on the forefront of social media and networks. He spent most of his career as a writer (his latest book is called Smart Mobs), but he started teaching at colleges a couple of years ago. He was an early user of Twitter, and he says he often turns to it for teaching advice. "As a relatively new teacher, Twitter is really my main connection to other educators who are using Web technologies in their teaching," he told me. "I use it to find suggestions of things to do, and to bounce things off people." He also uses it to have a public conversation about trends in social media. He argues that Twitter isn't for everyone — and that users have to post regularly so that people will be reading you when you want to turn back to seek advice. "I'm not selling it — you have to see whether it works for you," he said. "If you want to share information in small bites with a group of people who share your interest, that's what it's for."