Twitter

So, I have been hearing great things about Twitter and finally decided to check it out. I liked it immediately. Thomas Friedman has made the argument more than once that "The World is Flat", and I am now a believer. Sorry Columbus! Imagine that at the touch of your finger tips which are already attached to a phone you communicate thoughts, ideas, locations, warnings, etc...at any given minute. Why is it better than texting? Because you can check on more than one person that you are "following" with out having to have any real time communication. So if you are just curious as to what your friends are up and do not want to text each one individually to satisfy your curiosity just pull up your twitter connection and have a look.

Before I really delved into what Twitter is and what it does I called a friend, Jeff Browning, and asked him to investigate Twitter and give me a positive report on how this tool can benefit society. This is what he came back with: Rachel why not find a way to utilize Twitter to benefit people who are in long term care homes. He felt that it would be a great way for these people, who are often disconnected from many of their family members more than they would like to be, to communicate their own thoughts, or simply check on their friends and loved ones. I was very impressed and now I would like to see one of our upcoming seniors in the school district that I work in take this on as a Senior Project. The upcoming senior could host a fund raiser to raise money to put computers in a given nursing home or long term care facility. The senior then could work with our sociology teacher to have a group of students volunteer their time training the employees, residents, and family members of this facility, and then monitor the data for results.

It amazes me more every day the new technologies that are becoming available that can do great things to improve communication in society if utilized appropriately.