Now I can explain Twitter to my wife

Published by in digitalstorytelling on March 10th, 2008

Thanks to Lee and Sachi LeFever’s latest creation, “Twitter in Plain English,” my chances of effectively explaining Twitter to my wife (and others) just increased by a factor of ten!

Nod to Chris Lehman! :-)

I think these “in plain English” videos could be used to challenge students to explain complex concepts through simple, yet highly informative and effective stop-motion stories.

I think I’d like to see “Derivatives in Plain English” next. Any takers?

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On this day..

3 Comments »
  • http://ideasandthoughts.org Dean Shareski

    I’ve posted this a few times so I might as well here as well. I don’t think this is Lefever’s best work. Maybe it’s not possible but to me explaining twitter goes way beyond the constraints of a 150 second video. I wouldn’t use this video to promote twitter as a learning tool. In my blog post , I cite a TWIT episode where they begin to deal with the complexities of twitter. I’d add yesterday’s (March 9th, 2008) release as further proof of the enormous power and intrigue of twitter. It’s bigger than I thought and I just don’t feel this video helps explain that to educators. It still focuses on the trivial and completely omits the real significant value of networking.

  • http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

    You are certainly right, Dean, that the complexities and value of twitter go far beyond what is presented in this video. The value of social networking to educators, in terms of just-in-time help and support, and the backchannel conversations which Twitter empowers, certainly are not captured in this latest video.

    Like you mentioned in your post, I generally don’t try to explain Twitter in sessions I’m sharing with teachers about social networking. I think social networking opportunities like that posed by the Classroom 2.0 Ning and just blogging are much more straightforward to understand and explain than Twitter. I like Twitter, in fact I love it, but it remains somewhat of an enigma that I only partially understand myself. I think this video CAN help people understand Twitter a little better, but as you point out this is not the “complete” explanation. This video provides just a partial window.

    Perhaps we should brainstorm ideas about Twitter which are not captured in this video, and make our own version for educators?

    I wish WordPress could trackback to Twitter– several folks have left comments about this post (and links) for me in Twitter that aren’t captured here. (Yet.)

  • http://blog.genyes.com sylvia martinez

    Hi Wes,
    I did a post a while back on why and how to have students create these kinds of videos. They represent the visual side of technical writing and could be very helpful too!
    http://blog.genyes.com/index.php/2007/04/27/rss-in-plain-english-ideas-for-student-made-help-videos/

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