In his TeachOIT post “Twitter: What’s the Point?“, Tony explained a few ways Twitter has been useful to him both socially and professionally. I’d like to add a further way that Twitter has improved my academic life. As a graduate student, finding the motivation to do academic writing can be…elusive at times. Many doctoral candidates find membership in academic writing groups to be one way to overcome this obstacle. But whereas such groups sometimes can be too formal or rigidly scheduled, building an academic writing community through Twitter offers a flexible network of writing buddies. If I make an impromptu plan to go to a local café for two hours of academic writing, I can instantly let my Twitter writing buddies know where I’ll be. If they want to join me, they can simply show up. If they’re otherwise occupied, they can ignore my post.
Twitter has served me well in this capacity. You might try it yourself or recommend it to graduate students you advise or teach. A variation might even be fruitful for undergraduate class projects.
To see the nuts and bolts of creating a writing network, see the next page…
Creating a Writing Network
After setting up a Twitter account, I invited potential writing buddies to Twitter and explained how the network might function. Once they joined, we began “following” (Twitterspeak for “keeping track of”) each other. When we log in to Twitter, we can see each other’s status updates-short messages letting our followers know where and when we plan to write that day or week.
Individualized Networks
Unlike a standard writing group, a Twitter-based writing network gives you an individualized network that often but not always overlaps with those of your writing buddies. This gives you more control over who you would like to work with.
Text Updates
Even more useful, we can subscribe to individual people’s updates via text message. By customizing our preferences, we can specify from which people we would like to receive text messages and during which hours. For instance, if I know I only want to write in the mornings and my priority writing partners are Lynn and Kyle, I can set up my Twitter account to receive text messages only from Lynn and Kyle and only between the hours of 8 and 10am. I can also update my own status via text message. (Twitter offers free text messaging; only your cell phone plan’s text messaging rates apply.)
Privacy Issues
Because this use of Twitter requires you to post your whereabouts, you should consider protecting your privacy. I do this by setting my account to “private” so only the Twitter users who I have specifically approved can view my updates. I also sharply limit the number of people I approve, reserving my Twitter use almost exclusively for this purpose. Other members are less guarded, permitting their academic and social use of Twitter to overlap.