Journal 5: Twitter

I already use Twitter, I was resistant at first because I kind of think its pushing the "look at me" culture of our society a little too far, but I joined last year for work. Because while I'm not excited about using it on a personal level, I do think the professional connections and educational opportunities can be far reaching.

Currently, I use my own twitter @TooheySL for connecting to people professionally, sharing educational idea, concepts and content, and networking at conferences.
I also have an educational twitter that uses the idea on one of the readings of "Bite Sized Info" teaching: @UCIrvineEM. Twice daily we post Emergency Medicine facts and have about 500 followers, our tweets are often retweeted to thousands of people. 

I already follow quite a few people on Twitter, my boss and coworkers, my hospital, several larger governing bodies in Emergency Medicine. 

Occasionally use hash tags for search, in medicine with have #FOAMed which is "Free Open Access Medical Education." So I'll sometimes look for that one. Although mostly, I use it when I'm at a conference or what to follow the goings on in a conference and I'll follow that conferences hashtag during the conference. TwitterFall has an ok format but I prefer TweetDeck which also allows me to search and follow certain hashtags - just opens it in a separate app for me and I find the format a little easier - plus it allows me to tweet and retweet which I didn't see in TwitterFall.

Overall, I think Twitter has a lot of opportunities professionally, although mostly I use it because I want to have a social media presence. I'm not sure if its as applicable for people who don't plan on focusing on social media in their future. Educationally the opportunities are endless, we've started with resident education but I hope to create similar patient education feeds. We've also talked about using Twitter to make conference lectures more interactive and allow questions and discussion during lectures. 

1) How is use of twitter in graduate studies different than K-12?
I think in higher education Twitter is going to be more about getting information across, while in K-12 its about using a media that the kids like to help engage them.

2) What is one of the biggest challenges in using Twitter in my field?
Too many resources and information. Many people follow a lot of different people and their twitter feed is bombarded and has so much information that they can't really use it all. A lot like the Digg reader, I think it takes some experience and knowledge in what works for people to appropriately choose who to follow to make the most out of their Twitter feed.