Twitter came to the attention of the wider world with the recent New York plane crash/rescue where a participant took a photograph on his camera phone. Through Twitter, it was flashed around the world before the “traditional” news agencies were on the scene.

Barack Obama also used twitter to update followers on his presidential campaign.

So what is twitter?

Twitter is an online microblogging service.

What?

OK, in real language, its a cross between a blog a text message and a conversation that the rest of the world can hear.

Anyone can register and it is free.

“Twitterers” can post short messages (up to 140 characters in length) which can be read by their “followers” (people who chose to receive updates from this person or organisation).

Think for a second of the power of this – and bear in mind that a message can contain a link to a webpage, a photograph, video clip etc etc. It’s like being able to send a message to the world…

So why should I create a learning environment in twitter?

Well, one of the advantages of online training is that both participants don’t have to be present at the same time for an event to take place. That’s the same in twitter.

Sending an email has reliability problems, people use different computers, spam filters remove genuine message – in short, don’t rely on email…

With twitter though, everything is displayed on a webpage and (subject to user remembering user name & password) can be displayed anywhere in the world.

So, a teacher or trainer can send a booklist or reading list to students the week before an event via twitter.

How do I do this?, I don’t want the whole world hearing my conversation

When you go into twitter to set up your account, you can specify that your updates are protected (made private)

This is how to do it

When you register at twitter.com – go to the top right hand corner of the account screen & tick the “settings” option.

Then, tick the “protect my updates” option. This means that your updates, (posts) will not be published in the “public timeline” – messages that are entered by twitterers all over the world.

When someone you haven’t approved, visits your profile, they will see this message. Just click on the “send request” button” to email a request.

So, by co-ordinating users to protect updates – you can, to some extent use twitter to create a free learning (or any other) environment.