Blog about Twitter

Twitter discussions are quite different from BlackBoard and in-class discussions. Twitter discussions are fast-paced as users expect a large volume of users to respond quickly, whereas BlackBoard's technology lends itself to slower response times. In addition, people may be enticed to respond on Twitter because of the short character limit--it is easy to quickly jot down a thought and then publish it, whereas BlackBoard's options for editing text and longer character limit (if any) cause users to want to put a little more thought into their posts before publishing. In-class discussions also vary from Twitter. Whereas multiple people can respond to the same original Tweet simultaneously, in-class discussions follow a linear format and only one person can respond at a time. This allows ideas to develop thoroughly, but might offer less diversity of opinion. Even though Tweets are in writing that people can re-read and take apart, the nature of Twitter allows people to express ideas quickly without filtering through too much of their stream of consciousness.