It's been a while since I last blogged due to a number of things that have been happening in my life and work - busy, but all good. I attended the Dim Dim session last week and found it really energising and, just as all the other sessions have, it set me thinking about how I can use these experiences in my teaching. While I'm getting a chance to trial some of the applications I'm also able to feel what is like to be a student online. This is a new experience for me because all my study in the past has been face-to-face with some technology added-in. I marvelled at how the facilitators managed in what could have been a stressful situation and it was interesting to observe how we, the learners, are now relaxing and took the initiative to use the whiteboard during the delays and to chat through the text messaging facility. In fact I felt as if we were beginning to form a community of sorts. The smooth shift from Dim Dim to Elluminate left me in awe!!

Today is my first day as a 'twitterer' or is it 'tweeter'. That is I have opened my twitter account, connected it to my blog and even found out how to follow people. I feel like saying "well done me" - well in fact I have said it and that's how I feel. However, I have to say that I have been and am still to a certain degree skeptical about these tools because as a learning adviser my role is to try and have students move their thinking, reading and writing skills from the surface to a deeper level and hopefully eventually thinking critically. I'm not sure that these tools assist my task but also see that they aid other things like the ability to learn with people in Canada, Australia, Britain... I even have an active facebook page now having had an inactive one for some time. I'm wondering how others see twitter being useful as a learning tool.