Homeschool World Forum

This is a good initial list of what homeschool twitter feeds to follow, courtesy of Squidoo:

http://www.squidoo.com/-best-of-homesch ... itter-list

Here's another good account to follow for general education information (they give out a scholarship as well):

http://twitter.com/DiscusAwards

Be interesting to poll and find out how many homeschoolers actually use Twitter. I personally prefer not being limited to 140 characters or inundated in stealth advertising, but maybe I'm just too old (nearly to 30!). Opinions, anyone?

One could make the debate that if you shorten the chunk size of a discussion enough, it leads more to distraction than meaningful conversation. I guess my question is - why Twitter rather than blogs and forums? What is there that makes Twitter better than other mediums, rather than better than nothing?

Theodore,

Your point is well-taken. I guess I would highlight the accessibility of Twitter. The fact that you can access Twitter from your computer, or your phone, means that discussions can happen in real time. Forums and blogs don't have that element of conversation to offer.

The other point I would highlight, is using Twitter as an organizing tool. Sure, there are ways to aggregate blog and forum posts, but with the new feature Twitter lists, you can now create a list of all the Twitter accounts you follow that provide relevant information. With bloggers posting links to their latest entries, and with administrators on forum perhaps posting interesting discussions, you can now see all this in real time, in one place.

Look, Twitter certainly isn't for everyone. In the end, people have to do what they're comfortable with. My personal promotion of Twitter still comes from the potential I see in it, rather than what's already there. But the possibilities truly are endless, and I think if enough people use it, it can become of the most useful tools for connecting with other people and information that's important to them.

I think some blogs have RSS features that allow you to "subscribe" to them as well.