About Twitter

             Crowd sourcing is a force too powerful to ignore. With the accelerated changes in information processing capabilities, the time to disseminate the message across has drastically reduced over time. Using a simple hastag, trending topics could quickly escalated into a national headline. Moreover, it is shown that many big news such as corporate earnings or Federal Reserve's rate decision are first identified on Twitter, followed by printed medias. 

             Twitter main differentiation from blackboard discussion is that of user familiarity. Using Twitter is simple and intuitive, whereas using blackboard requires prior usage with the system. For a first time blackboard users, the panel for discussion requires some knowledge about the platform to find the right option. Furthremore, Twitter has a much larger user base comparing to blackboard's, and to avoid the chances of confirmation biases, it is important to hear from others for their opinion and ideas as well. 

            I think the main differences is that of feedback mechanism in between Twitter and Blackboard. In Twitter, a tweet marked with a hastag invites others to join in the conversation as well, an important feature which blackboard lacks of. With a timely update, users can reduce the waiting time for a solution to their problem, and improve efficiency. 

           However, the benefit of an in-class discussion should also be analyzed. Although you can get the lastest information on Twitter, a person to person discussion allows a more thoughtful process for students to exercise on the critical thinking skills and interpersonal skills, traits which are crucial even in today's data dominated world.