ancora imparo

A few weeks ago, I installed the Friendbar extension for Firefox. Since then, the most recent 20 Twitter posts show automatically at the top of my web browser. I’ve found myself using Diigo to bookmark and tag more and more websites and articles for use at work. I requested that our IT department unblock Twitter at school because I realized since downloading Friendbar at home that I was really missing out on so much information that I used to get (last year and the year before) from the people I follow on Twitter.

Friendbar will also show your friends Facebook status updates, which is nice, but the Twitter feed is the one that I really am glad I’ve got access to. This roundtable discussion about Twitter really explains why I use it. I have some friends who have said they didn’t see the point in Twitter, but I think they just haven’t found the right people to follow. I have status updates from Karen at Books on the Knob sent to my cell phone so I know about free books for Kindle. I see student discussions of books they’re reading from Youth Voices. I found out that there are two specials on MTV tomorrow night about the movie New Moon.

I saw some of the discussion of #AASL2009, the American Association of School Librarians conference, and I can go back and look at everyone’s comments as I have time. I’m so glad that Twitter exists. I relied on it more than I realized in the last year and a half. I hope my IT department realizes its value to teachers and does unblock it.