A Love Letter to Twitter

 Dear Twitter,

I feel that after 11 years of knowing each other the least I can do is write you a letter to tell you how much you mean to me. You have been around since I was finishing up my dissertation. You have been there for all the weird moving parts that is finding your place, your space, and your people in academe and beyond. You have been around for 2 partners (now exes) and a bunch of not great ideas or choices.

But you have also been there for some fabulous ones, some great ideas that became books, that became conference papers, that became friendships and collaborations. You came two years after I started my blog, a blog that I started because I needed to look for sessional teaching work and I was working through what it mean to be an educator and what pedagogical things mattered to me. I joined you because I was working on curriculum for a graduate certificate in social media and I wanted to see the limits of this space and what it could do to connect people and organizations. Some of the first accounts I followed were things like Merlot, and other resource sharing sites. I of course added a bunch of Victorian scholars and conferences because that was what I just finished devoting almost 6 years of my life to. It was a lovely space to discuss things, but there were not many 19thc scholars on at that time.

Everything changed with #MOOCMOOC in 2012. With MoocMooc the folk that I followed expanded as did much of the focus of conversation. Within that space I could talk to people from across the world about pedagogical choices, ethics in ed tech, and assessment strategies. We were testing the limits of what this space could be as a content creator and a back channel and it was fabulous. I built PLNs in many areas. I started giving workshops to faculty about building their own educational PLN, or using Twitter in classes as a formative activity. It was an exciting time of discovering and building. This continued with #Rhizo14 and #Rhizo15 where it was obvious that I could never leave you. You had become part of my educational ethos, Twitter; you were an integral part of community building for me when as a sessional I was teaching at about 4 different institutions at any one time. 

I carried you with me to conferences. I got to meet some of the people I followed on you in real life, in sessions, over coffee, or meals in random American cities (try the taters with parmesan in Columbus, okay maybe not). You were the comforting blanket when I didn't know anybody at a conference. You were the exciting back channel that led to more followers, more articles, and such insightful discussion.

Over the years my followers have become less 19thc and definitely way more education, instructional design, accessibility, and disability focused. As I worked as an instructional designer for many years, you became the place where I could test out cool new ideas, where I could be warned about inaccessible practices that some folks were adopting and to avoid them. I learned about books and articles I should read from you. And I learned to ask the difficult questions that many people didn't want to hear, but still needed to be asked from you.

I made connections for new positions, learned about different opportunities, and you also provide me space to share articles and books I have written and to connect me to podcasters who want to have my voice on their podcast (I still don't know why, lol). You have become the centre of my advocacy work, the extension of my deeply-held ethics that pockets will never be deep enough to buy. 

In the pandemic you have become the community of friends and family that I do not have close to me. You are the interesting thing to think about when it is too quiet in my house. You are the place where I will try to inform folk of things they should consider, the people they are erasing with their policies, the practices that exclude so many. You are the place where time and again I remind folk to please alt-text their images, so much so that I now receive snail mail addressed like this.

I love you Twitter, I could never leave you, and even when I have math bros yelling at me for asking them to alt-text their bad math joke jpgs and gifs. You are now the space where every other week a group of first-gen instructors, grad students, and staff get together to chat for #FirstGenPLN chat and where folk have come together to organize reading groups on important critical disability books. You are where I will continue to shake my head at people who don't know what UDL really is and do harm with their exclusionary framing of it. You have been a part of my life for a lot of things who make me who I am today as an educator, an advocate, a community member. And though I know this place can be really nasty sometimes, I am glad you exist, and I am forever grateful for all of you I have met here on this blue bird.