Uh-oh. Twitter.

Like many people over the age of 30, this writer is more than ambivalent about Twitter. Yet Twitter, or things like it, may well be real, live professional tools that we'll be using in 3-5 years. Sigh. But SCUP has been moving more and more into social media, and just from a couple of weeks of beginning to use Twitter, SCUP staff have seen some potential.

This EDUCAUSE Quarterly article sort of hints at some of what we have been thinking and observing, too. Speaking of last year's EDUCAUSE conference, the authors, Joanna C. Dunlap and Patrick R. Lowenthall, are both from the University of Colorado, Denver, note:

At a lively “debate” (“debate” because ultimately both debaters were fairly pro-Twitter), the negative commentary focused on three things: Twitter takes too much time, the content is of questionable value, and it promotes social (or, anti-social) myopic-ness. We do not disagree, but instead have found, as many have,2 that Twitter’s potential as a powerful instructional tool outweighs these negative factors. In this article we share some of the insights gained using Twitter as an instructional tool and explain why we think Twitter, despite its drawbacks (and really the drawbacks of social networking in general), can add value to online and face-to-face university courses.

BTW, you can "follow" "SCUP News" on Twitter here. At the moment we have 161 followers.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA