Twitter and Higher Ed

You’ve probably already heard about Twitter, a micro-blogging application that appeared in 2006 and which has surged in popularity over the past year. Oprah, for example, is now on Twitter, and CNN offers news updates via Twitter. Posts to Twitter (which are called tweets) are brief — no longer than 140 characters, which is perfect for sharing a quick update about what you’re doing or reading, for disseminating a web address to a useful site, or for asking your Twitter “followers” a question. Universities have also begun to use Twitter to good purpose. I’ve provided a complete list of university Twitter sites at the end of this post, but one in particular stands out as especially interesting. It’s TweetChicago, which is the official Twitter site for the University of Chicago Law School. What’s cool about TweetChicago is that on one page is presents the Twitter feeds of numerous faculty members, committee chairs, student council presidents, and so on, with the tweets appearing in thought-balloons beside a picture of the respective tweeters. The tweets range from those that are relevant to the study of Law (”I am unsurprised that Judge Easterbrook got the history right and yet, five years later, the Supreme Court got it completely wrong”) to the merely social (”Home from Brazil. We’ve got a pretty nice little Saturday planned: Home Depot and maybe Costco”). It would be interesting to recreate what TweetChicago has done for an undergraduate or graduate class, as an informal complement to that class’s online discussion group in UW-ACE. Would doing so help to foster collegiality among the students?

Here’s the link again to TweetChicago, followed by a list of Twitter sites at other universities.

1. Adams State College
2. Allegheny College
3. Azusa Pacific University
4. Bates College
5. Butler University - Athletics
6. Calvin College
7. Colgate University
8. Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD)
9. Humboldt State University
10. Kalamazoo College
11. Morehead State University
12. NJIT
13. Oklahoma Christian University
14. Pace University - Student Campus Events
15. Richland College
16. Roanoke College
17. Roanoke College
18. SMU
19. State University of New York at New Paltz
20. Tarleton State University
21. Texas Tech University
22. The University of Arizona
23. The University of Texas at Austin
24. The University of Texas Medical School at Houston
25. The University of Texas Medical School at Houston - Office of Communications
26. Univeristy of Tennessee Health Science Center
27. University of California - Office of the President
28. University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
29. University of Wisconsin-Stout
30. Wayne State University
31. Western Carolina University
32. Western Washington University
33.