Twitter? Do I have to?

        Well, I did it.  I didn’t want to do it.  Every impulse I had screamed “Don’t do it!”  And yet, I did it.  I tweeted.  I made myself a Twitter account and I sent my first tweet.  It read, “This is my first tweet.  Not sure how I feel about it.”  But, that’s not totally accurate.  I know exactly how I feel about it.

         I feel like I don’t get the fascination with Twitter.  Honestly, do I really care that you’ve been waiting in line for two hours at the airport?  Does the fact that your dog is at the vet have any bearing on my life?  Does knowing that I have a cold mean anything at all to you?  The answer of course, is, “No.”  Then why do we find it necessary to put ourselves out there and chronicle every detail of our lives for our “followers.”  The fact that I actually have “followers” being the only good thing about Twitter.  Seriously, people actually care what I’m doing?  Why?  I don’t know.  My life is pretty lame.  I do the same thing every day.  Get up, go to work, come home, rinse and repeat.

         But then I started thinking about ways to use Twitter in my professional life as an educator.  Knowing full well that my use for it in a personal way was minimal.  I imagined my students sitting in the computer lab tweeting about the latest story they had read.  I saw their faces light up as they tweeted an answer to the challenging math problem.  Dare I say it, I imagined them truly engaged in the learning process.  All that being said, I still am not sure I will actually use this kind of social media.  For one thing, my elementary age students do not have immediate access to devices that are equipped with Twitter.  They do not have Smartphones or iPads at their fingertips.  Well, some of them do, but only because Mommy and Daddy thought it necessary.  For another thing, I still just don't like Twitter.  It is not for me. But, since I have been FORCED to use it for a class I am taking, I will make the best of the situation.

         And this will be my solemn Twitter vow.  Raise your right hand and repeat after me:  “I, Jessica Nathan, do solemnly swear to use my Twitter account for good and not for evil.  I will embrace it as a learning and teaching tool.  I will engage my students and my colleagues in unique and diverse ways.  And above all, I vow not to tweet every time my daughters do something cute."