Journal #5 My experience with Twitter

I thought the powerpoint with Twitter was useful in creating assignments, but I am wondering why only English and Geography disciplines were represented.  What other assignments can be created across disciplines using Twitter?  It is a communication tool and writing is definitely the main idea of Twitter, but how can other disciplines embrace this social media tool?  With the 140 character limit, I am curious to know how other disciplines utilize this tool for creativity other than writing or marketing a service or product.

The purpose of Twitter, I gathered from the Youtube video (retrieved on October 30, 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OxIz_3o3O0) is communication, interactive education and engaging students to use this as an educational tool while using it as an everyday tool in their social lives. In an effort to keep up-to-date with information feeds, Twitter's instant feeds provide massive amounts of information rapidly. This rapid technological information tool feeds headlines faster than newspapers can print news and commercial breaks can end for the next news hour, giving new meaning to the phrase "hot off the press."

My experience with Twitter was overall positive. I have used Twitter for professional purposes by posting to a library wall in my place of employment. In an effort to complete this assignment post, I created my own personal account:  Natalie Marie Lopez @BookCookMuse.  

After setting up my account, I compared my experience to Digg and began choosing networks based on my interests.  Following my love for books, NPR, TED talks, museums and adding some Educational/Technology multimedia groups, I received interesting and diverse tweets from the tweeters I followed.  Evidently, I gained a following myself without even marketing my Twitter presence!  By the end of the week, I had a whopping 8 followers!  Some of the followers reciprocally followed me from the tweeters I followed and some I had never heard of.  Just for enrichment (and kicks), I followed some celebrities such as George Clooney, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki (the cast of the hit show "Supernatural.")I only tweeted once about my love for writing and that November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  I heard crickets as I saw no favorites, re-tweets or followers.  Truly an organic post as I did not hashtag, tag or market this.
Because I am tweeting using my name, I hesitate to post any content that will reveal personal images and stands I take on certain issues.  Tweeting from my professional account, I found it more useful to promote library events from my work, services that can benefit students and the occasional historic connections to our collections for Throwback Thursday.  
Twitter has a role in my professional life and development at my current place of employment in a library at a university.  I post meaningful educational posts on the library’s social media wall and the occasional tweets from students asking for research help. Some of the tweets I received from my followers were educational, entertaining and even way out of scope of what I signed up to follow.  For instance, the tweet below came from a network somehow connected to something I am following. Although posing an interesting question, it is an odd inclusion in my feeds!