"Microblogging enables a real-time interaction between users, using different devices, technologies and applications." (Holotescu C & Grosseck G) Twitter, one of the best known microblog platform has more than 600 million users among which one of five are college students. The great potential of education Holotescu and Grosseck's study, they presented a course using a specially designed microblogging platform called Cirip.ro. they suggested that differing from Twitter which open to all the public user, specially designed microblogging, Cirip.ro, comes with the following features:

use in microblogging had already stimulate educators to develop new methodology and explore educational features in micro blogging. In

•   Users have the possibility to specify the domain about which they will write the notes; this makes finding microblogs from a specific domain easier, particularly the educational ones;
•   Creating user groups; pupils, students, teachers can create public or private groups(in the private ones the notes are visible only for members);
•   The possibility to embed images, audio and (live) video files, presentations, documents in notes;
•   The possibility to subscribe to search feeds or to feeds offered by sites / blogs / social networks –the same as users and groups, the feeds can be monitored, online, by IM, or by SMS.

  They suggested that using such a educational microblogging, students gained interest in life-long learning, motivations and flexibility in developing their own educational and vocational route. The advantage of flexibility was also mentioned in Tweeting for learning: A critical analysis of research on microblogging in education (Gao F. 2012). "learning can happen beyond pre-scheduled class times, and learners' time on task may be significantly expanded by opportunities of spontaneous and sustained learning."

  But microblogging in education also face challenges. One of the most inmportant ones is participants' unfamiliarity with microblogging. The technology developed so fast that the Twitter now isn't the same as is was half year ago. A starter may face great challenges to use microblogging and this may lead to their uncomfortable feeling in the learning process. So it's teachers' responsibility to help learners to learn how to use microblogging and help them find the great advantages in this form of learning; show them the joy of express and share ideas in the unlimited network. Though it is a long way to go, we already have a good start.

#Find Your Interest#

  I joined #edutechchat this Thursday. I am not a new microblog user, but really a novice of Twitter. So before I joined the Twitterchat, I took a little time to research what a Twitterchat is. I am very familiar with Weibo, a mainstream Chinese microblog, and I dig it from my memory that there's something with # as well. So, I made a comparison between Weibo and Twitter to make a better understanding about Twitterchat.


  The word "chat" was a little confusing for me. In Weibo, when you post your piece of microblog with #hashtag#， then your blog will be categorized into what we called 话题(topic). So, anyone who want to share his/her mind or looking for others ideas about this topic can search those microblogs and also post theirs with #hashtag#. It's a really fun to search topic like #what will you do or #super recipes in Weibo. But usually what we do is sharing or reposting with short comment such as "perfect!" or just a . There's really few communication between users that could make me connect it with "chat". This function is really as same as Twitterchat, the only difference is two # vs. one. The picture on the right is what I searched for #EnglishEdu in Weibo.  One more thing I found is that the Twitterchat isn't limited in certain time, whenever I come up with an idea or problem, I can Tweet it with #hashtag and wait for someone discovering it.

  Consider my teaching career, I regard Twitterchat as a very eye-opening way to explore useful resources and an approach to get help from other teachers, even those famous, influential ones. I found many who in the same chat sharing  teaching methods and new invents within the field. These tweets can be retweet a million times and spread to world in a few minutes. This means twitter is one of the fast way to acquire the latest information and learn the newest creative thinking. And talking about getting help from others, it is amazing because I will never know who will help me solve my problem, it might be dean from Oxford who I've never met. Through the chat, I might know more people in my field as well. So Twitterchat really gathers people from the same field and provide a space for them to exchange ideas, for my professional development it is really a contributing tool. But I must say, the twitter needs  long-term keeping and active participating; it's just like the human resource network. The more influential, the more chances your tweets would be focused  in millions of tweets.