All this technology- what to do?

We had the free Twitter session on February 12 (rescheduled from January 29 due to weather). There was a good turnout, which led to an interesting discussion.

We went through the basics of how Twitter works and struggled with creating accounts due to the web page not opening right after clicking join- you could not scroll all the way to the bottom to get to the Join Now button.

After all this, one student asked why someone would want to join Twitter- an interesting question. I wrote a small description of what Twitter is in the advertising for the class, so was of the mindset that anyone coming would want to join, not be asking why they would want to. Of course, this is the great thing about a free session, if you decide it's not for you, you haven't invested anything except a little bit of your time.

I went over the possible advantage of using Twitter as an advertising tool, but the importance of remembering it is a social network so advertising should not be the only tweets you send out- it's about creating a relationship and giving folks something of value at no charge along the way.

One student said he had come just to learn more about it because technologies like this are the thing of the future- he might not use it now. One said she came to learn and set up an account for the business she works for, but could also see using it to stay in contact with friends and family- like she does with Facebook, but quicker.

I believe it's exciting- and good for us- to learn new things, that's life and when we embrace change it's much less stressful! However, it's up to us to decide which things we learn and which we want to stick with. I just read an article by Martha Beck, life coach who I think is great, and to paraphrase- you should do the things you really need to do and the things you're passionate about. Let the others slide- if they keep coming up do them, otherwise don't worry about them.