3 Steps for 21st Century Learning

I especially enjoyed where Steven writes about a conference he recently attended. He explains Twitter was being used by participants during the conference and how it exploded into a global conversation:

At first, all these tweets came from inside the room and were created exclusively by conference participants tapping away on their laptops or BlackBerrys. But within half an hour or so, word began to seep out into the Twittersphere that an interesting conversation about the future of schools was happening at #hackedu. A few tweets appeared on the screen from strangers announcing that they were following the #hackedu thread. Then others joined the conversation, adding their observations or proposing topics for further exploration. A few experts grumbled publicly about how they hadn’t been invited to the conference. Back in the room, we pulled interesting ideas and questions from the screen and integrated them into our face-to-face conversation.

When the conference wrapped up at the end of the day, there was a public record of hundreds of tweets documenting the conversation. And the conversation continued — if you search Twitter for #hackedu, you’ll find dozens of new comments posted…

I have been using Twitter for a while now to post articles I find and want to share, to read updates from others, and to update others on what I am doing. It was not until after reading Steven’s article that I decided to delve into the search function of Twitter to see what I could find. I did a search for #iranelection and the results came up just as they would in any other search. The wonderful thing about Twitter though is that about 20 seconds later a message appeared at the top of my screen that said “122 more results since you started your search”. People around the world connecting and discussing topics with an automatic update every few seconds…..that is what I love about Twitter.

Please read Steven Johnson’s article: How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live here.