Dean’s reflections:
I was unable to dedicate a lot of time to attend TCC this year and had to attend sessions while also trying to do work. I did have TweetDeck running in the background along with Growl, which prompted me every time a new tweet came in. So, in a way, I was able to follow many of the sessions through the tweets of my fellow classmates. This helped. I have been using twitter for a couple of years now, and find that my most active tweeting has been when I have been at conferences, anxious to share what I learned with the rest of my team back in Hawaii. I found that I wasn’t as motivated to tweet the TCC Conference this year. Maybe it was because I was distracted, or maybe because the conference was virtual and I felt like I was already online? Perhaps, I didn’t want to keep switching screens to tweet and didn’t want to send tweets from my phone either. Whatever the case, I found that I had to force myself to tweet.
I love Twitter and my experience has been very positive. At work, we’ve used it for professional development, for tech support and for building a sense of community. Our team is scattered throughout the campus and on our two neighbor island campuses and staying in touch with Twitter has been powerful. Much like our exploration of social presence in Second Life, Twitter also provides this sense of social presence or ambient awareness.