Is Twitter the New ListServ?

My first experience with ListServs came in the early 90's, about the same time I discovered the Internet.  I was just in awe of this amazing resource that offered me contact with teachers all over the state - to share ideas, to pass along resources, to ask questions when I was stumped.  It was great! Sure I had teachers at my school, but now I had, at the drop of an email, hundreds more.  And the best way to connect with these teachers? The ListServ!

For those of you too young to remember the ListServ, it's basically a giant email group.  You email the List, and then the List mails out to everyone else.  Instant contact!  Today, 20 years later, I still receive emails from ListServs, and I have slowly, in the past few years, just stopped bothering to read them all.  It just seems so time consuming logging in to my various email accounts and reading all those emails.  Also, the only people on my ListServs are people who have also sought out and found them, and then get approved to join the list - limited audience.

Then in November 2008, I heard about this new website, Twitter, where you could quickly share with friends. I thought of it as a text message that goes to everyone all at the same time.  Hmmm.. looks interesting.  So in 2008, I sent two tweets; in 2009, I sent one! Not seeing a purpose here, who cares where I am and what I'm doing? 

In 2010, I found a use for Twitter - DonorsChoose! I could tweet out my projects, and hopefully someone would see it and donate! I sent 27 that year.  OK, so I'm tweeting, but who sees it?  I truly didn't see a purpose for this at all, until...

TAGT conference, December 2011, Twitter Chat! I'd heard of Twitter Chat, I was actually on a ListServe that had members who participated in a Twitter chat.  This sounded like something that might be fun, and I have a Twitter account, what the heck.  In a matter of hours, I was addicted!  I discovered the power of the hashtag, or as my friend refers to it, "that pound sign."  

Now, less than a year later, I have gone from approximately 30 tweets, to close to 200 - no where near some of the folks I follow, but way better than before.  I have almost completely stopped checking my emails that were dedicated to ListServs.  Now, I tweet, I follow others and have their tweets come to my phone as text messages.  Last week at a conference I tweeted out an idea I'd gotten in a training about using QR codes, and in less than a minute, I had a reply from another teacher with a website listing dozens of uses for QR codes in the classroom, and since he had used the hashtag for the conference I was at, not only did I get it, but over 1000 conference attendees did as well! 

The people I follow on twitter cover every state and at least three continents.  My hundreds of teachers on the ListServe (by permission only), just jumped to millions with a hashtag! No permission, no application, no filtering.. just a common hashtag, and we're all connected.

My goal, to convert at least one teacher each month to Twitter, to extend the network, AND to contribute tweets of information I find or create, and be a producer, not just a follower.

Join me! @yesteach