Hi fellow students,

Twitter when introduced to us by Stefano was entirely new to me, as it was for some of you too, as evidenced in my case by my embarrassing failure to find even the 'hash-tag' symbol on the keyboard right there in front of me. Got it now, the #, the hashtag symbol, right-hand side, adjacent to the return key. Never had reason ever to use it before.

The purpose of introducing Twitter in the Social Media for Learning course seems to be to convince us that Twitter 'can be applied in an educational setting'; but from the outset I have had reservations about this. These doubts are still niggling at my consciousness even though obligingly I have set up a Twitter account - @Ogsmicroblogs - as required, making a 'tweet' or two for myself, posting short messages to classmates on Twitter limited to 140 characters, embedded a link here on my blog (to be inserted at the end of this paragraph), searched for content using hashtags, and in the process finding myself bombarded henceforward by tweets from all directions, a veritable inundation, all messages unsolicited, and the majority of no interest to me whatsoever. See what I mean, you must have realised too, as well as I have done, the irrelevance - in large part, as far as I can tell at present - of Twitter 'in an educational setting' ? QED. 

Fell into the fast-ebbing waters of the river at Ogmore Castle's Stepping Stones last week, up to my knees; first time in 69 years.#ogmore pic.twitter.com/rHN6b28cwL

— Terence Ogmore Batt (@Ogsmicroblogs) November 4, 2016

Fell into the fast-ebbing waters of the river at Ogmore Castle's Stepping Stones last week, up to my knees; first time in 69 years.#ogmore pic.twitter.com/rHN6b28cwL

— Terence Ogmore Batt (@Ogsmicroblogs) November 4, 2016

(Question is, addressed to anyone nice out there: how do I EMBED this 'tweet' within my blog, rather than simply copying & pasting, eh? Have I done this correctly? Can you access tweet (1) & tweet (2)? How to set up a Link; Share; Embed? Convert HMTL to Compose? Help required!!)

(Update: Thanks, Stefano; done that. Successfully embedded my two tweets.)

However (to continue my cursory critique of Twitter), in fairness (my only excuse is my ignorance), having now scrolled through Stefano's suggested reading list of educational technology journals (listed on his current blog under the 'Journals A-Z' section) (research papers on how Twitter is used and is useful in Higher Education), I have to admit that my initial uniformed rather casual dismissal of Twitter as a learning platform was patently wrong, or at least misguided. Sorry about that, Stefano. 

Have I - as part of the requisite 'Tasks & Homework' tasked this week - 'learned how to tweet, re-tweet and search for content using hashtags'? Yep. Done that. Finally, we have to 'pick a Hashtag' to find out information about a topic of your choice'. Subject of interest? Oh, somewhere I've been. Let's try the Corryvreckan. Hashtag. Into the.

 #Into the Corryvreckan.

I have 'discovered' through Twitter that 'The Corryvreckan' is a Wetherspoon Pub in Oban. 

Wetherspoons, Oban

https://twitter.com/jdw_Oban. 

However, frankly, I do not and did not wish to know that. I was thinking more of the whirlpool, the infamous the lethal Corryvreckan Whirlpool, situated between the isles of Scarba and Jura off the wild West Coast of Scotland, in the raging and un-navigable (according to British Admiralty charts) Gulf of Corryvreckan. I'll try searching again. Ah, that's better:

https://twitter.com/search?q=corryvreckan%20whirlpool&src=typd

(Need to 'link' this, place this tweet in situ. Having some 'technical problems' here, Stefano. Assistance needed.)

Whatever, I have checked out #corryvreckanwhirlpool using the social medium of Twitter. Not very impressed with the amount of 'learning information' contained in this. I'd get far greater a learning hit by simply Googling it. How effective is Twitter to find out information about the World's Second (or Third) Largest Whirlpool? Not very.

There are situations where Twitter must be highly conducive to social communication, 'learning' in the broadest sense. I am thinking of (for example) 'Breaking News' events, where the news is immediately conveyed to a large audience well before such news becomes 'breaking news' through the usual cable & network televisual media. Important events may even go unreported, or distorted, biased and unrepresentative, for whatever editorial or 'political' reasons. Scary this, the realisation that our broadcast 'news' even on the BBC is in fact quite heavily edited, scenes of a graphic nature routinely censured. Twitter by-passes this.

Terry Batt