I was just getting caught up with my Twitter feed after being out doing some work for a colleague when I realized something for the first time….e-mail can be way too clunky and not nearly as efficient as Twitter. I ran across some great articles and blog posts about technology and leadership by Lyn Hilt, an interesting essay by Alfie Kohn, and even an article about student athletes and concussion laws at Education Week. Each of these blogs/articles were interesting enough that I wanted to share them with a few fellow colleagues. Unfortunately, none of the people who I wanted to share with use Twitter so I had to resort to e-mail to send along my newly discovered gems. I had to log into e-mail and create a new message with the appropriate people in the “To:” field, copy and paste the URL for the blog/article into the body of the message and hit “send.” While this was not all that onerous to be certain, it would have been a heck of lot easier to retweet or direct message the intended recipients while I was on Twitter. On e-mail, I was also somewhat limited in who would receive the message. I certainly was not going to spam the entire faculty with what I had found but know that there are others who would have enjoyed the posts as well.
The more I use Twitter, the more disenchanted I become with good old fashioned e-mail. According to my 17-year old son, “only old people use e-mail, Dad.” I am beginning to see the wisdom in his statement, although I will never admit that to him!
Nothing earth shattering…just a random thought I had as I checked in with my Twitter feed. Anybody else find this to be true?