Fizzics

Someone replied to a message I posted on a mailing list for Scottish Physics teachers. I had sent out an appeal for questions to put to the UK Google team about the roll-out of Google Apps for Education. Today’s reply confused me. It seemed to centre on reasons not to use Google Apps but OpenOffice.org instead - something to do with IT people at LA level not liking online collaborative tools.

I responded by saying the purpose of my original post wasn’t to bash M$ products but to highlight the opportunities we now have to stimulate collaboration among pupils. I suggested different tools, including alternatives to Google such as Zoho and wikispaces.

I couldn’t bring myself to add Twitter to that list for one good reason - Twitter spam. I’m not sure if it can really be called spam but I am beginning to pay the price for following people I saw as being influential. It’s not that they’re not influential, it’s just that they can tweet about everyday boring things as frequently as they tweet about interesting things.

I follow someone because I have an expectation of what I will find in the content of their tweets, forgetting of course that they have a personal life that is every bit as tweet-worthy as their professional life. I should probably feel more guilt about reading social stuff, it’s like sneaking a look at someone’s text messages when they leave their phone lying around. But I don’t, I just exhale and ask why on earth they felt the latest 140 character installment was worth tweeting.

Will Richardson sums it up nicely by talking about the signal to noise ratio of Twitter. I might follow his example very soon by actively unfollowing and coping with the guilt that I miss something worthwhile in the process.

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