Let’s just say I’ve been embracing my procrastination and as a result I’ve created a Twitter Fail Whale with an environmental activist’s bent. Feel free to give the image a little social media love!
A friend of mine recently asked for a few ideas on using ‘synchronous communication tools’ for her personal professional development. (Ok, it’s a Uni assignment rather than a general inquiry) 
Firstly she cooked up a nice lunch and poured out some wine. (Always a good start to any professional development session!!!) We signed up for Twitter as CINDY BURGE, installed Twitterfox and threw it out to the Twitterverse to welcome her. Which they did. Thanks all!
Next we installed Second Life and I took her around the ISTE Island to check it out and do a few screen dumps. She had a little trouble sitting on the chair (not the wine) & I hooked her up with the ISTE website. We then headed off to the Discovery Educator’s Network Second Life blog for a bit of a look around. After that I mentioned Jokaydia as an excellent resource to explore on her own time.
Lastly we dropped all the screen dumps from our session into Comic Life as a creative way to demonstrate a little of her learning.
Now her challenge as a second year uni student is to build her personal learning network to a point where online tools become a natural part of her learning. AND… the same goes for ALL teachers who don’t laminate their lesson plans 
Today a friend asked me, ‘Who should I follow on Twitter?’ to which I replied…
” Find someone you admire http://twitter.com/adrianbruce and someone who challenges you http://twitter.com/garystager and then check out the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow, and then the people they follow etc
(I do so love my keyboard shortcut prompt card)
Adrian
A couple of years ago I had the chance to attend a keynote by Marco Torres of Ican Film Festival fame. In amongst his many pearls of wisdom he said, ‘Know your Yodas’. For me these words meant to recognise the people who inspire, guide, extend, support and teach you.
Since my interests are so eclectic I was visualising an assembly of Yodas something like the Sergent Pepper’s album cover. My current album cover (or Ipod CoverArt hehehehe) would be a collection of: thinkers, cricket players, writers, musicians, photographers, friends, film makers, educators, poets, great leaders, scientists, artists, hackers and the picture would be constantly growing and changing.
Now with the advent of Twitter we can get to know many of our Yodas from the education world personally. We can have short (140 character) chats in real time with the people we ‘follow’ wherever they are in the world. We can: converse, challenge, argue, ask advice, organise get togethers, joke, lurk, direct people to readings or digital resources, call for Skype participants and even get to know a little about their personal lives.
As far as software goes for Twittering, I like the Firefox plugin Twitterfox. Using the Twitter homepage really doesn’t fit my work style. With Twitterfox each time a person adds a comment to Twitter it pops up in my web browser’s window. I can then glance down at it, give it a quick read and reply, go to recommended resource or continue working. Nice, convenient & relatively unobtrusive.
Twitter has become a nice add on for my professional development and it definitely has implications for the professional development of all educators.
So if… ‘ u rnt using twitter – itz where itz all at man ’ – (MizMinh, 2008) it could be time to start checking it out.
cheers
Twittername = adrianbruce
PS Who are your Yodas and what would your cover art look like?