Wednesday's experiment on using twitter and Goggle plus as a way to conduct an online literature class was interesting, but not very effective. Twitter's system of short messages that aren't delivered quite in real time isn't conducive to discussion. However, something like an instant messenger, available in gmail, would work better. Whereas Twitter needed to be constantly refreshed to display the most recent messages, an instant messenger would do it automatically. First, this would allow the students for focus more on what to say, than finding out what had been said. The discussions would flow much easier, and without the need to #tag, the comments could be updated faster. The problem with any kind of text-based chat would still be the multiple conversations that inevitably come up, where some people have moved on to a new topic while others are still stuck on the topic from an hour ago. The idea that all of our generation can multitask like a supercomputer is false, and some if not most members of the class would become lost with the many different conversations flying back and forth.
Goggle Plus, on the other hand, showed great potential as a surrogate for classroom discussion. Everyone can see each other, pick up on facial cues and voice tones, and not talk over each other. The discussions could more easily be regulated by the professor, and if someone needs to ask a question, the conversation wouldn't be twenty pages ahead by the time that question gets answered. Any kind of face-to face interaction is far superior to text based interaction when it comes to simulating a classroom environment.
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