By Bonnie Stewart, Prince Edward Island, Canada

This post emerged from a conversation between Bonnie Stewart (@bonstewart) and EdConteXts facilitator, Maha Bali (@Bali_Maha) following Bonnie’s post “Something is Rotten in the State of…Twitter.” It is an explanation of the thinking – and context – behind that post.

My house is currently infested with fruit flies. I have hidden all the fruit in the refrigerator, but still they come. They are last gasp of summer where I live, the swarm that makes it possible to look ahead to six months of winter as almost a reprieve. They make me think about rot, and what it feeds.

I ended up thinking mostly about Twitter.

I’ve been on Twitter seven years now. Initially, it was a space for real-time banter and discussion within my blogging network: when I started out online, my life was far removed from academia. As my identity has shifted back towards education and career, my Twitter circles have expanded to reflect each new facet: fellow Ph.D students, educators, researchers interested in the socio-cultural implications of technologies, people with something to say about identity in the 21st century. But the bloggers and mombloggers remain, and the para-academics who first walked with me through thinking about what it means to be online, together, in networked environments. Continue reading Behind “Something is Rotten in the State of…Twitter” →