Filtering Knowledge and Information Beyond Twitter

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Jon Andrews recently tweeted out the following comment:

Filtering Twitter feeds for sense, challenge, criticality & quality sharing can be tough. Who/what are your go-to’s?

— Jon Andrews (@Obi_Jon_) October 14, 2016

Now I know where he is coming from. You only need to look at Graham Martin-Brown’s recent reflection for an understanding of some of the less savory chatter that can fill social media feeds. However, I feel like we are back at the age-old debate as to whether every teacher should be on Twitter?

Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter, but both my appreciation and use of the platform has developed over time. I once went to Twitter as my first port of call. However, now I use it more as a learning well, a meeting place. Although I go there to learn from others, I am less worried about missing out and instead entertain the serendipitous nature of dropping in every now and then.

Here then are some spaces I go to for critical and quality engagement:

• RSS Feed: This is usually my starting place. I have over 200 blogs in my feed. The way it works is that if I find someone who posts interesting content on Twitter or any other space, I will then add them to the list. In addition to sharing  interesting posts out, I also bookmark ideas with Diigo.
• Newsletters: Different to the average blog, email newsletters are the new zines. I am currently subscribed to the following: Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel, Tom Barrett’s Dialogic Learning, Graham Martin-Brown’s Revolution, Laura Hilliger’s Freshly Brewed Thoughts, Austin Kleon’s Weekly Newsletter, Ian O’Byrne’s TLDR, Bryan Mathers’ Visual Thinkery, Dan Haesler’s newsletter and Audrey Watters’ Hack Education Weekly Newsletter (HEWN). Some are not much more than a list of links, others provide a rich commentary. What stands out is that they all provide curated content to scour.
• Nuzzel: A social aggregation application, Nuzzel searches through your Twitter feed for posts that have been by a number of people. Although you can access the site for a constant feed, I depend on the daily email for a summary of links.
• Email Subscriptions: I get emails summarising content from a range of sites, including Diigo, YouTube and Pocket. These can be good to flick through and often provide ideas and resources that are outside of my usual connections.

So there are some of the ways that I filter content. Although Twitter can be fantastic, there are also other means. What about you? What strategies do you use? As always, comments welcome.

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Filtering Knowledge and Information Beyond Twitter by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.