What I want: Twitter group (categories) in an RSS reader.

I wrote about twitter here. In a nutshell, I think twitter is human rss. Cool. But useless unless I can incorporate it into my rss reader. Twitter isn’t just about me regurgitating my trip to a coffee store, it’s also about learning what friends are doing.

I’m currently following 127 people, and being followed by 40. I’ve got 60 updates.  What I would love is a web-based program where I could categorize my twitter follows like my RSS feeds:

1. friends
2. ed tech
3. geeks
4. gamers
5. NYC

You get the idea.  I dislike clients - the more I can keep on the web, the better. Does anyone know anything I can try?

On 23 April 2009, Aaron Ball inscribed the following thoughts about this post:

Would something like Tweetdeck help? It can separate your Twitter friends.

On 24 April 2009, Chris Chin inscribed the following thoughts about this post:

Hi Bill,

Just curious, what are your thoughts about incorporating Twitter into the curriculum.

How would you approach that?

How would you use it to help kids learn? Especially elementary school kids.

I’m afraid that this Twitter thing is just going to take up alot of the kids time and stuff instead of having some real evidence that it’ll help kids learn.

I mean Twitter is a great idea….but I’m just not sure of it’s educational value.

Any ideas?

Chris

On 24 April 2009, Aaron Ball inscribed the following thoughts about this post:

We use Twitter as a sharing tool in the computer lab. When students are doing research on topics or if they find cool things to share at home with the class they Tweet it. We’ve gone over the tinyurl and tr.im we sites so they are able to easily share their info and ideas.

The biggest problem we’ve had is that they all wanted to use it as an instant messenger. We’ve shown them how ineffective that is and now they are graet at shaing their ideas and info.

I have two twitter accounts one for personal use and one for school. I check at night and see if my students have questions they need answered. They often answer each others questions but if they don’t the answer I give them goes out to everyone. This is better than the single hit email.

On 24 April 2009, Chris Chin inscribed the following thoughts about this post:

Nice ideas, and I’m in agreement that Twitter, for me at least, is just a glorified IM. But hey if it can help capture the attention of students, I’m all for it.

Although, it seems to me that, as a communication tool - it’s a great thing for kids to use (as long as they’re using it for their benefit) but I just don’t want them wasting time following the Jonas Brothers or whatever else they’re into.

Also, if the kids at home don’t have computers how else would you incorporate this technology into the curriculum?

On 24 April 2009, Bill inscribed the following thoughts about this post:

Hey guys!

Nice to meet you, Chris I looked at tweet deck - seems to fit the bill pretty well for my categories. I wish there was something web based I could use.

I really like the use of twitter as a “back channel” tool in schools - the way Aaron describes it is really cool. I think the challenges he describes are formidable. I might throw the twitter feed on a projector, so the whole class could see it.