Building Knowledge and Learning

I'm sitting here early on a Saturday morning taking a look at what's going on in the world through the eyes of those I follow on Twitter.

I've had more questions and more conversations about Twitter recently and I'm asked about how it works and why I use it. Here's why... This morning, I'm came across a tweet from Wes Fryer (@wfryer) about a presentation he's sitting attending in China. (at about 7:45 am my time, Twitter shows that it was posted about 3 hours ago). I now have his notes from the presentation and links to several videos on Edutopia that I hadn't know about 15 min. ago. What's even more important to me is that I can now connect the teachers I support in my school district with this resource. I have some knowledge that connects with my personal learning but can also be distributed so others can gain new knowledge or build new connections in their own learning. I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty cool!

So, here's what occurs to me...if I didn't have a Twitter account and didn't follow the people that I do, how would I have known about this? Why do I use Twitter? Because it helps me to build my knowledge and learning from the experiences of others. As a teacher and as a learner I can't think of any reason more important than that.

Image by mndoci on Flickr