Earlier this week, Jackie talked about using Twitter and how it’s been going. She finds Facebook more “conversational” for her, but Twitter still has its purposes.
Obviously, I’ve been reinvesting my time here. I spend most of my time online reading other blogs. It makes sense to me to up my contribution again in that medium. And I like writing and I want a bit of a record of my teaching so that when I go to plan next year, I can see what works and what doesn’t. I’m sure some people come here and say tl;dr, but that’s okay. I’ve seen some other people start blogging more again to work against the Twitter and Facebook mentality of 240 characters (or at least shorter posts). And I think that’s a good impetus.
Over the last two years, I’ve pulled back from contributing to most social media, mostly due to time constraints, but as I’ve settled into my new job, I’ve felt not only that I have time to participate, but also a need to participate. My school knows about all my media participation. I post about my activities at school and often my school will retweet or post to Facebook some of the things I do. Which is fabulous. So part of my writing is appropriate for PR. But also, I learn a lot, and I learn a lot more when I’m actively participating. So here’s where I’m building my efforts.
Twitter: I tend to check in with Twitter in the morning after my morning blog reading/posting. I shifted the people I follow to mostly K-12 educators. That has been really helpful to me as those folks post articles about teaching and discuss teaching in many ways. I’ve also participated in several scheduled chats via Twitter, which I also find helpful. My favorite of those is #isedchat, a chat specifically for independent schools. Most teachers are public school teachers and have to deal with very different issues than those of us who are IS teachers. Most of my participation is during those chats. Besides a post or two in the morning, I mostly follow. And I think that’s okay.
Facebook: I am thinking about getting rid of my Facebook account. I haven’t even logged in lately and frankly, I find it kind of creepy. It’s not a professional space for me and I don’t want it to be a personal space. And I have issues with their privacy policies. So that might go away. I’m on the fence still.
Google+: I really like Google+, but I’m not following that many people and/or the people I follow are not posting much. So the traffic is low. Which is sort of a good thing. The people I’m following there are different from the people I follow via blogs and Twitter. And I think that’s a good thing. In fact, the blogs I read are generally not the same people I follow on Twitter either. Google+ encourages more writing than Facebook or Twitter, but not as much as blogging. It’s a good place to post an article and write a brief snippet about it. Some people have suggested that they’re going to use it as a blog, which, frankly, I don’t have any desire to do. But I do like the slightly more thoughtful nature of it. It’s slower than Twitter, less silly than Facebook. That may be a factor of the people not the tool, but that’s the feel of it for now.
I’m still searching for a different social bookmarking tool. I’m sticking with Delicious for now, but I want something new.
Another tool that I’ve used a lot less is Flickr. Partly that’s a function of my not taking as many pictures, but it’s also because the pictures I take on my phone automatically go to Google+, which is very convenient. I could set it up to go to Flickr as well, but meh, don’t really care. I like Flickr very much, and recommend it to people all the time, but I’m not as invested in it personally.
So that’s where I am with social media. There are things out there I haven’t really touched: Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc. And maybe I’m old school, but so far, I like where I am.
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