notes from the interblags: the twitter and wiki edition

• Claire sent me this New York Times Article on Twitter, a social networking tool I just started using a few weeks ago. An excerpt from the article:

What is different about “quick blogging” tools like Twitter (which imposes a strict character count so it can be easily used on a cellphone) and Tumblr (which allows longer messages as well as photographs) is the degree to which people use them for spontaneous and almost continuous communication. Mainly, they describe the minutiae of their day, but when their lives take more dramatic turns, they often take the network along in real time.

[…]

But Ms. Riechelt, 32, thinks the microblog experience is valuable for those listening in on personal details, sharing in what she calls “ambient intimacy.” She writes that while others may ask: “Who cares? Who wants this level of detail? Isn’t this all just annoying noise?” she counts herself among those “who find great value in this ongoing noise.” She added, “It helps us get to know people who would otherwise be just acquaintances.”

• Via I don’t remember where, an Inside Higher Ed article on using Wikipedia in the classroom. Martha Groom at the University of Washington at Bothell had students write to Wikipedia:

Not used to being edited on the fly by people they’ve never met, some students might also have felt uneasy about another feature inherent to Wikipedia’s design: constant revisions by regular contributors. Brockhaus suggested that was part of the experience, and that students posting material to the site would have to stop viewing their work as “sacrosanct.”

[…]

There was another positive effect on her students’ work, Groom said: their assignments were generally better written.

There’s a lot more I could link to, but I need to get back to reading my students’ portfolios.