Where have all the tweeters gone? #EdTech #EdChat

This Summer, I've had the opportunity to spend some time with friends that were part of the OG education social media movement. We all have been friends for a number of years, but more passing ships in the night as we all got busy with family and careers. 

All of us had a few moments were we looked at the education landscape and longed, to a degree, where we could jump on twitter during a conference and see all of the learning around us. We could use one of dozens of hashtags to share something or learning something. Twitter, and blogs, were where educators could be found. Today, that doesn't seem to be true. 

Blogs as we knew them are few and far between and Twitter chats died and X is now a hellscape. Many of tried to make Threads or Mastodon or BlueSky happen, but it was a successful as making "fetch" a thing. I often wonder if I am just an old guy longing for the past and ignoring all of the places where educators are excelling and sharing their stories. 

I've seen the Instagram videos and TikToks and Youtube shorts where people are showcasing their brands or giving 30 -60 second tips and tricks, but the discourse seems to be gone. Twitter was a place to push thinking and challenge accepted norms. You could use it to share your long form thoughts from your blog and people could engage with that content. Is this sort of connection simply lost? 

My last post was entitles Evolutions and maybe the edtech space has just evolved into something that I simply can't recognize and maybe that is what is supposed to happen. 

Andy Bernard from "The Office" has a wonderful quote from the series finale, "I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you've actually left them."

I worry about the lack of a space for teachers to share their ideas with others and get feedback from people with totally different lived experiences. I know that all of those interactions I had made me a better teacher and, now, it feels like everyone went back into their silos. The lack of connections will have a negative impact on our students and l wish I knew what the answer was to this solution. Maybe it is time to start over and bring back MySpace.