In response to this comic posted in one of our PLP communities, I left this [somewhat edited] reply:
May come as a surprise, but I continue to be skeptical of Twitter as a “conversation” platform. From a sharing and finding resources standpoint, I totally get it. Depending on who you follow, it can be a great, great way of finding great videos, articles, news, artifacts, etc. And from the occasional back and forth social banter point of view, ok, I get that too. But I continue to find myself impatient with the extended attempts at conversation. For example, I just cannot do #edchat type of stuff due to how disjointed it feels. And frankly, there is a missing depth to any back and forth on Twitter which 140 characters just can’t convey. I wonder that if we make 140 characters the main part of the way we communicate with one another without spending some of our time in more extended give and take that we will be losing something important in the process. Is Twitter really that powerful, or is it more an easy way to enter into the “conversation,” one that doesn’t require as much time and thought and therefore allows us to check the “connected” box but leave the more difficult, more time consuming participation at the door?
Just questions. Bracing for the replies… ;0)
I’m choosing not to follow the flow as much these days. I’m posting and sharing using BigTweet, and I’m mining Tweets through search feeds, but I’m not spending nearly as much time in TweetDeck as I did in the past. Not saying I never stop by, but I’m going there less and less.
In Linchpin, Seth Godin asked “Where did your art go while you were Tweeting?”(134) And I’ve been wondering the same thing. Is Twitter our art? Really?
Release the Twounds. ;0)
If one is spending the majority of learning/networking/communicating/reading time in Twitter, that that is indeed a problem in my mind. The … (sorry, I used up my 140 characters)
I’m using Twittertim.es http://www.twittertim.es/ more and more and tweet deck less and less. It mines your twitter stream for links and gives you a newspaper like layout of what the hot topics are. We always say the cream rises to the top…well this site is just that…the most tweeted/talked about links make up your Twittertim.es page.
You can see my page here: http://www.twittertim.es/jutecht
It constantly changes based on what’s being talk about by the people you follow. I’ve been spending some time cleaning up who I follow to get purer results of what I want to learn about. I don’t have to keep up with the stream, I just have to mine it.
Twitter is a place you still need to add to, and less and less a place you need to be.
Thanks for this info about and link to twittertime.es – I want to give this a try!
I think Twitter is, or can be, what you want it to be.
For me that is an avenue for networking (in and out of my immediate field of work), as well as access to resources and even some conversation…or the beginning of conversations that move on to other venues.
It involves some regular maintenance to be valuable. Twitter can also just be social – for the fun of it.
I hadn’t heard of twittertime.es What a wonderful tool. As a new tweeter, I am trying to fathom the stream of tweets when you begin following close to 1,000, 2,000, 10,000 people. I am no where close to that yet. I like the diversity of the platform. It’s purpose is different from a longer conversation. Like that saying, if all I have is a hammer, every issue looks like a nail. As an educator, I am learning to tweet because I believe in flexible thinking and access to information. We need a range of communication modes and styles to touch the different people around the globe. I follow people on Twitter who I would never have the opportunity to know otherwise. I wouldn’t Facebook with them either – they wouldn’t friend me. Twitter truly is a fascinating medium.
In still believe this http://ideasandthoughts.org/2009/01/01/twitter-deep-vs-blog-deep/
I have found the same with conversations like #edchat- scratching the surface, lots of clever ideas and comments, but certainly no big strides, depth, flow, or closure! Thanks for post- I wonder what direction we are moving in for communication?
I asked myself similar questions recently. I wonder, I question. Then I tried to recall what my network was like pre-twitter and found it was a smidgeon of my network now. It was national but not global at all. My horizons are widened with a global view and my ceiling has been put at a higher level. i like to hear different points of view and I now have constant learning happening. As well, I can share to more people and help is from a deeper pool.
However there is a need for limiting oneself to enable one to participate in other aspects of life. Balance is needed and balance is a skill that the young today have to work with constantly. Those who don’t are on facebook constantly or using their phones constantly messaging and it has been said to be addictive.
I wonder why they don’t say people who are avid readers of books/newspapers are addicts?
Thanks one again for expressing what I’m feeling. Apparently John Mayer is feeling the same thing;
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/27/john-mayer-twitter/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
I really stopped using Twitter about two years ago. I still keep an eye on it, but really don’t post. I was somewhat distracted trying to keep up with conversations and the hashtags made it hard for me to read. I really liked the sharing of resources and connecting with others.
So I started to use Plurk. Plurk allows for threaded conversations, and there is a great amount of resource sharing. It may not be for everyone, but I find it to be a better community for my PLN.
I’m with you on this one. I embrace Twitter as a microblogging platform, which I think it serves quite well. Like you, I find little interest or ultimate value in using it to engage my network in what one would categorize as traditional “conversation.”
I agree with the premise that we do not really get into the higher-level discussions that we need on Twitter. That being said, the posts and articles that I am able to hear about through the tweets of others provides me with many more resources than I ever imagined possible a few years back.
The best interactions for me are still the face-to-face kind where I have the opportunity to be in a room with forward thinkers and learn from/with them. It must be noted that my PLN on Twitter has allowed me to go places and meet with amazing people that would not have been possible without a few tweets.
Will Twitter remain the vehicle I use to connect with my PLN? It is hard to believe that it will be given all of the other options that are created daily.
As much as I like and use Twitter, I’ve never bought into the idea of it being a place for serious conversation. Most of what might pass for discussion seems more like a tennis match of the type we used to have in middle school: people lobbing comments and ideas across the net with no clear idea if anything will come back.
Even so, I still find a lot of useful and interesting posts in my Twitter stream. And if that ever changes, I can always unfollow those who are clogging up the works and find others who are worth the time and effort. Something I’ve learned about my PLN is that it has to continually evolve to be valuable.
Books and actual conversations are great. Magazine and journal articles next. Then some good blog reading and the other fun stuff in my feed reader. Twitter and Facebook last. Yet I was spending more time on those last two! Since I cancelled my FB and Twitter accounts I now have more time for the really good stuff. Trust me, if anything actually good gets tweeted, it rises up into the feed reader and blogs.
I completely agree. Another thing I’ve found with twitter: you have to be active to be taken seriously. Whenever I was active, I would get responses to almost everything I tweeted. Fellow teachers would rush to my aid whenever I needed a resource or a suggestion.
Now that I rarely tweet (and admittedly, most of my tweets are to local friends about events in my town), I find that twitter’s usefulness has gone down even further. The last few times I’ve tweeted a query to teachers, I’ve received zero replies in response. Perhaps my own fault because my tweets are no longer as relevant or useful to teachers, like they were when I first started. As such, I might be getting filtered or just passed over. Still, this fact has basically just driven me even further from twitter as a serious pursuit. Twitter, to me, is one of those mediums that rewards according to how much one invests in it. The ultimate question, though, is whether the rewards are worth the investment? For me, the answer is no.
I feel the same. I like that I can curate resources that pertain to my interests. But, for a fairly new user on Twitter breaking the hermetic seal of reciprocal communication is difficult.
Please see my post If a Tweet falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? http://writingdegreezero.com/archives/459
Twitter is a “tool”, it is how you want to use it and what is most comfortable to you. As noted by other comments, everyone takes a different approach on how to keep up with the stream. As short as 140 words may be, it is very powerful to get the point across. It encourages diagloues and provided real-time support. The benefits truly outweights some of the not so personal/disjointed feel. I have met many wonderful people on twitter and I know I will continue to do so despite everything else.
I think Twitter has value for starting relationships and connections. I will not argue that it is deep and I agree with the analogy in Dean Shareski’s post linked above that Twitter is like an appetizer. But to me twitter is like a cocktail party. It is a good place to meet new people, new ideas, and interesting blog posts.
When I started to blog about a year ago no one read my blog. Twitter allowed me to meet other educators and read and comment on their posts. This led them back to my posts where discussions now take place. Twitter also led me to work with Dean’s undergrad students, find Skype partners, and a game programming collaboration with a class in Vietnam.
One thing I think that can be lost by edubloggers who have been a part of this for a long time is the difficulty of getting started building relationships and conversations for newbies. Twitter makes it “easy” for them because if you engage with people you will build relationships that lead to deeper discussions in other places.
It is better to rub shoulders with someone at a cocktail party before you just show up at their office and try to engage a stranger.
Totally get that, but my question then is do they go beyond the easy Twitter interactions into more complex participation? In other words, is Twitter a gateway to participation, or is it the end game? Probably not a lot of research out there, but would be interesting to find out.
I can only speak from my experience and what I observe that Twitter is a gateway. I mention the examples of how Twitter has led me into deeper participation of blogging, skyping, a collaboration project, and I have attended online webinars that came out of twitter discussions. I probably would have given up on blogging if not for building an audience through Twitter. I don’t blog just for hits but for conversation and if no one ever read it then I would not continue. I read on Twitter endless projects and collaborations so I do not think I am unique in my use. But with any tool people will use it in different ways and I am ok with that. I agree it would make for interesting research.
Twitter is art. Twitter is poetry.
You must convey your message under a strict rule: Say what you want, but say it in 140 characters.
Similar to haiku, iambic pentameter, etc.
The truly artful can do this well.
I hope people will follow me for the information I provide, as well as the way in which I provide it.
I must be using a different twitter- I get daily valuable links, ideas, connections that are not happening elsewhere. I don’t have to be absorbed in it, I can dive in and duck out, as needed.
But that is the point of it being part of a “personal” network resource- it works differently for different people, and its misleading to out a blanket “twitter is bad / twitter is great based on one touch of the elephant’s leg.
To be a honest, I am sensing a desire to place an expectation of familiar forms of communication/conversation onto something that is new or different, e.g. expecting more of the structure or post-reply-reply-reply format of email, discussion forums.
It sounds kind of like whining.
This is different. Used well, it addresses Shirky’s filter failure; used like we think of familiar forms of conversation… #fail
Stop using the old mindsets on a new form. Or send me an email, and I will print it out and fax you my reply.
Of course the beauty is we ge to choose our level of water we want to swim in. The tool itself does not create or destroy the value, it’s not about the 140 character limit or messiness of hash tags- it’s what creative people make of it.
I’m thinking that filter and conversation are two different beasts, right? I get the valuable links, ideas and connections too, but I find the “conversation” part of it really challenging. Sure, the 3-4 tweet back and forth chat is one thing, but beyond that, it loses a linearity (is that a word?) that I guess I just need to make better sense of it.
Maybe just me.
Will,
Can you really handle more conversation? Is that really what’s desired? Do you have the time for scheduled or deep conversation?
I actually find Twitter more satisfying than blogging since I may actually know that people are reading what I’ve written. Blogging is a whole lot more work and often feels like yelling down a well. Driving eyeballs to a blog seems a lot more like junior high school popularity and less about publishing.
I thought more about this comment last night Gary, and I see your point to some extent. I’m an outlier in the number of comments I get on my blog. I hope I can still appreciate the frustration of those who don’t. Maybe my perspective on this whole conversation thing is skewed by the back and forth that happens here.
But it makes my point, in one way. Assuming you agree there is value in this thread, which may be a big assumption, but assuming you do, now let’s try to Tweet the whole thing. Let’s limit these comments to 140 characters, space them out over about 2000 tweets over three days, and lets see where that gets us.
And, I have to say, doesn’t Twitter set itself up to be a popularity contest? Aren’t you the one rubbing elbows with celebrities there? ;0)
Twitter has huge value in my life, no question. All I’m saying is that it’s hard for me to go deep there.
At the time of this comment, there are 20 responses to this blog post. On your blog, Will, it has not been uncommon to get 40 or more comments. I wonder at that point how many new participants read the long litany of comments that preceded theirs and respond to much of what has been said, in the attempt to be part of the conversation rather than simply adding their 2 cents. And, as the owner of such a participatory blog, do you have the time to really engage all of those who comment in true “discussion” or dialog… and does the frequent “echo chamber effect” give a false sense of meaningful discussion or validated thinking?
I write this because I think Twitter can do some of these same things… give us a false sense of meaningful connection and dialog as well as an affirmation that our time is well spent there due to all of the RTs, for example. As Boyd comments regarding Twitter, “you have to be active to be taken seriously”. I’m not convinced that the time spent primarily on Twitter has a good return on the investment on certain levels.
However, as some have shared here, there is certainly great value to be found there (as there is on blogs). I have found great value there, even today. It then becomes a matter of leading a healthy, balanced lifestyle, both in the physical sense as well as in the virtual/digital. I like the analogy of the tool belt, full of a wide variety of tools for “getting the work done”. This first requires an understanding of what work needs to get done and then an understanding of the tools that can be leveraged to accomplish that work. And, as Alan writes, that is very personal. But, you know the expression, if all you have is a hammer…
Perhaps the bigger hurdle here is the development of an understanding of- and passion for- the work that needs to get done… done within ourselves and done between us collectively.
Hey Steve,
Great questions regarding participation and the echo chamber. I do think that there is pretty consistent push back in these threads, certainly not overwhelming, but not non-existent either.
I guess the Twitter ROI depends on what the return is…connections? Information and links? Deep thinking? Conversation? In some cases, it’s great. Others, notsomuch. Which speaks to Alan’s personal use thinking.
I guess my question still goes back to the stand alone use of Twitter…do people engage as concretekax does in other ways, or is it their one stop for networking? And what are the implications of that answer?
Yeah… not saying that there is no dialog or push back, as you say… just that these tools call all be used quite flexibly and one must use them with critical eyes wide open. Everyone enters the network on his or her own terms. Hopefully, the growth is not limited by the use of a single tool.
Steve,
You make a good observation.
I’d add that the number of blogs receiving even 40 readers, let alone comments is minuscule.
Twitter seems like more of a conversation to me than blogging does. It’s temporal, just like a conversation.
This observation is not empirical, but it appears that Will’s blog attracts the most “participation” when his posts are more about technology than education. (eBooks, Twitter, etc… vs. school reform, learning theory)
(Un?)fortunately, I almost always read every comment if I reply. It takes a lot of time, but sometimes even changes my perspective.
I have never been on twitter, never will be part of twitter. Sorry, I’m long winded and prefer to talk about things indepth with thoughtful answers and quite frankly anyone that has anything relevant worth saying is blogging it with links and all. Sorry celebrities, we spend far too much time idolizing you offline, don’t need to follow you online. Thanks!
I’ve actually been able to use Twitter to engage and enlist “celebrities” in discussions of value. There is an enormously democratizing aspect of Twitter, not to mention ease-of-use and portability that makes it one of the best communications platforms ever, IMHO.
Wow.
“One of the best communications platforms ever, IMHO.”
Wow.
Unlike many of the Web 2.0 programs, Twitter (largely) does exactly what it’s supposed to do without any learning curve.
I’ve said it 1,000 times, if Web 2.0 is worth anything, it’s because the technology requires no instruction whatsoever. It should be as easy as talking or making a wisecrack.
I’ve never seen a celebrity on twitter. I don;t look for them, they ar enot part of my network.
My only point Will, and others, is that you keep thinking of conversation in the ways you know them in other media. This is new. It’s different. It’s not a visibly linked thing you can follow like a chain of sausages. Everything IS miscellaneous, eh?
I’ve heard Biz Stone describing twitter as communication having removed the expectation of a reply we feel in the e-mail space. A reply is nice, but not expected.
I’m not saying it is the ultimate place to have a conversation, but to me, it is an interesting one. I get more than links; I get push back on ideas, challenges, insights.
Think different?
Totally willing to entertain the idea that the conversation space is changing. Just still wondering if a) we’re beginning to define “conversation” (as that cartoon depicts) as what happens on Twitter and b) if so, whether or not that is a good thing.
I’ll say it again, I find a lot of value in having Twitter as a part of my learning life.
While I chafe at the lack of characters on twitter, I find that I can still carry on conversations. Ideas can be thrown around, people can join in and drop out. Blogs barely allow this, nothing else other than a face to face meeting comes close and even that limits the participants.
I have seen the number of blog posts dwindle over the past year, is this a reaction to that?
No question.
Twitter is my art. I thoughtfully construct tweets to inspire, to provoke, to illicit response, whether public or private. The 140 character limit creates a fascinating research arena, where a simple twist of words can reveal cultural bias or the norming of a group or community.
I am the conductor of a symphony. With the flick of my language baton, I can bring forth the soothing resonance of a well-tuned cello, or the grating sting of a chilled french horn. There’s music in that stream, well worth a listen.
Okay, so this conversation is luring me…mostly a lurker…out to comment.
I have to agree with Alan here. If a ‘conversation’… like other conversations… is what you are after you are definitely not going to find it in Twitter. But, then Twitter has never (at least not to my knowledge) professed to be a substitute for anything or ‘like’ something else.
Twitter is Twitter.
This conversation reminds me a little of the one that usually swirls around online teaching and learning and whether it is ‘better than’ or ‘worse than’ traditional face-to-face environments. Online educational experiences CAN be better and they CAN be worse. It is really about the USERS and what they make of the experience. Online education is just an is.
Twitter is Twitter.
It is a different type of communication. To grasp the power of Twitter you have to break free of the temptation to compare it to anything else. It really is about the experience a user creates for himself/herself. It is about who you choose to add to your list and read and on those rare and delicious moments that you connect with those people you have selected it is really quite special. It enables connections that would not otherwise happen. I can tell you that without Twitter I would not know who Will Richardson is or what he thinks, I would not read Cogdogblog regularly, I would not peek back at GardnerWrites to see if there is something new there. I would not stumble on a stream from the #140conf last week and hear the awesome folks there….well, you get the picture.
Twitter is what you make of it.
Thank you for a well thought out comment.
“But, then Twitter has never (at least not to my knowledge) professed to be a substitute for anything or ‘like’ something else.”
Twitter is just Twitter. It’s not trying to be an indepth talk or heart to heart. I had never thought of Twitter as something outside the conventional conversational realm. When viewing the kids that I teach using it, it’s mostly them telling their peers “I’m awake. I’m at the mall. I’m eating at Mickey Ds.” etc. I don’t really understand this need for some (not all. I’m not saying all Twitter users) to have to inform people of every single move they make.
Your post made me ever the slightest bit curious about what the draw is. I may have to check the twitterverse out.
I guess I should never say never.
So 36 replies and how many came here from Twitter. Gary Stager mentioned celebrities I love being able to chat with keynote speakers and attend conf all around the world. Twitter is empowering.
The point of advertising is to start a conversation, not to conclude one. Many simply use Twitter to promote themselves and interests on Twitter – and why not. Others use it to support peers etc. Many of the non-us conversations are leading to New public networking – and professional development, awareness and resources. The point is not to maintain a ‘burbclave’ but to help people – if you want to.
From an Australian perspective; Twitter helps public education in ways that the system won’t – and unmarinalises them from other communities – be that mental, economic, or policy driven.
I suspect this is a fishing trip my freind.
Dean
Well, I just read every comment to this point… I do find blogs to be a better way to have an indepth debate and sometimes a conversation. Depends on the blogger – many never respond to comments… or very selectively. In Will’s case with 30+ comments, understandable but…
As to twitter, I think it depends. I use it to find people, ideas, information and to post my own ideas, links to new blog posts, links to comments I post, etc. I am getting more careful about who I follow – some people use it like facebook and, well, I don’t use facebook much – too social. I like twitter for the “professional” use, less the social use. It’s great for conferences where hash tags allow a stream of consciousness for the sessions to flow to anyone tuned in – that’s cool!
But, as a conversation tool, I think not – it’s annoying to write in 140 char snippets and I don’t like it when people write multiple 140 char pieces that are meant as a paragraph…
Overall, twitter is a powerful connecting tool that I depend on – just gotta use it thoughtfully, follow thoughtfully, and don’t let it run your life! 🙂
It’s all part of the whole – Twitter, blogs, email, Skype, wikis, Ning (well maybe not so much) Flickr … I find they all leverage each other. Sometimes I make a connection in Twitter I continue in Skype … sometimes I find someone that wants to connect with me or my class through Twitter or a Ning or Email and later we follow on Twitter … I find the combination to be the driving force. I know that is not a totally new concept, but I don’t think we want to make decisions on anything outside of how it effects ourselves. Case in point, when the iPad came out we saw right away some commenting that it would be everything from life changing in the classroom to useless and a non starter. I always laugh at these comments like we haven’t learned the lesson that if someone comes up with a valuable use somewhere along the way … then great! Why decide or boast that you know whether or not some new app or piece of hardware has a place in education or anywhere else? Let time and innovation be the decider. Let the user decide what is valuable to them and their unique situation.
I think ultimately, Twitter is about making connections with people, content and learning. As Jenny said, how many reached this blog post because of a Tweet?
Is it the be-all and end-all? No. As Little Yogi noted, “Twitter is just Twitter!” Earlier today, I was blogging about the poor use of PowerPoint in the military and in education. Is it the tool, or the way it gets used?
All I know, is that for myself personally, it has allowed me to reach beyond my district, region, state, and country. It has introduced me to TED talks, Educon, Constructivist Consortium, PLP, RUP’s, etc. That ain’t too bad for only 140 characters at a time!
I don’t know if this makes sense, but on some levels Twitter is like an ad or commercial for your point of view. The hope is that you make a connection with other like-minded people and go deeper through another medium.
Tweet #1: Ostensibly, there are different ‘types’ of ‘conversation’, no?
Tweet #2: And even differing definitions of what constitutes ‘extended’.
Tweet #3: Perhaps we look at Twitter as a longitudinal thing…
Tweet #4: With the ability to use search to examine patterns of thinking…
Tweet #5: As well as the links folks used as support for their thinking.
Tweet #6: It’s gonna be a goldmine for anthropologists and those who study intellectual history…
Tweet #7: As well as psychologists and sociologists mapping human behavior.
Tweet #8: And while it doesn’t beat a conversation over a bagel…
Tweet #9 Ultimately our Tweets may say more about a way of thinking than what we thought.
Tweet #10: And the public nature of the end result — however stifled — may turn out
Tweet #11: #mostinteresting
I Twitter less and less and use Plurk more often. I find that it’s much easier to have a conversation on Plurk. On Twitter I always seem to miss some of the thread and when a hashtag is used, the results are just overwhelming. I think Twitter works well for quick sharing and maybe as a back channel at a conference. But most of my time is now spent on Plurk. Check it out and join the real conversation!
On Twitter I stand a better chance of catching conversations that, say, on this blog post. I clicked from the feedreader and discover (as always) a steady slew of comments. I make my way through about half before, aware of other things pressing on my time, I jump down here to make a comment that someone else may well have made already.
When I notice a comment on a blog post on Twitter – and this is now how most people comment on my posts, rather than on the blog itself – I generally spot it and, if I don’t, I stand a pretty good chance of spotting it if, as here, 40, 50, 60, 100, 150 people choose to add their own view. The wider scale of time to ‘catch’ a story on Twitter, as opposed to the one-time opportunity afforded by a blog reader when the original post is submitted, is its greatest boon. On the flipside, the conversations had about my own posts on Twitter are now permanently disjointed from the ones happening on the blog, and the blog post is the permalink that I go back to when I want to revise my learning.
Now, I mustn’t forget to click “Notify me of followup comments via email” 😉
Hah! 49 comments so far… exceeded my figure of 40 a day ago. How many found there way here via tweets on Twitter vs. their RSS readers, I wonder…
Nice diversity of perspective represented here.
@Patrick, I love that analogy that you share, “…on some levels Twitter is like an ad or commercial for your point of view…”
As much as I like and use Twitter, I’ve never bought into the idea of it being a place for serious conversation. Most of what might pass for discussion seems more like a tennis match of the type we used to have in middle school: people lobbing comments and ideas across the net with no clear idea if anything will come back.
Even so, I still find a lot of useful and interesting posts in my Twitter stream. And if that ever changes, I can always unfollow those who are clogging up the works and find others who are worth the time and effort. Something I’ve learned about my PLN is that it has to continually evolve to be valuable.
I always felt that twitter isn’t meant for real conversations to take place. More like a noisy pub where you just meet people and say hi
Interesting perspective and great comments. The other day, I asked my students to do some reading and make some connections, then to create a hypothesis based on their connections and write it on the board. Then I asked the students to read their friends’ work, and then pick one or two that they liked, and describe why. The majority agreed that they liked the shorter ones. They were still able to extract deep thoughts and main ideas from one sentence, yet found the succinctness mesmerizing. Therein is the beauty of twitter. It is succinct. It is mesmerizing.
I’ve enjoyed reading the conversation. I was conversing with some of my students the other day about blogging vs. twitter. None of the students I spoke with had knowledge of blogging or its use. When I described it for them, your sentiments (original post) proved to be true. The idea of engaging in an online conversation that required critical thought intimidated them. They preferred the more superficial avenue that Twitter allows. However, I think that students can be eased into the process of engaging in more meaningful conversations online by making use of blogs in the classroom. Part of the issue involves maturity (these students are simply not interested in spending their time online engaged in thicker conversation) and another part involves understanding (they do not understand the value and how it relates to them due to a lack of exposure). It will be interesting to see student perspectives after exposure.
Yes, i think that facebook ad twitter have changed the way people communicate. I think that people feel more comfortable talking through text than in person or over the phone. Technology has changed the way people communicate.