All over the world people are tweeting 140 character responses to the question ‘what are you doing?’ as a way to communicate with friends, colleagues and others who have common interests.

TwitDir (a twitter directory) shows more than three million people are communicating in this way.

The exchange is different to normal conversation, it results in sharing of resources, help with fleshing out ideas, stories are told, people are inspired, problems are solved, feedback is gained and collaboration occurs.

The trick is to know who to follow and how to manage the flood of information; as well as being prepared for the fact that you may get more insight into the person that you are following than you have had previously.

I originally started using twitter a few months ago but was rather disappointed about the whole experiment because I didn’t know anyone else who used it.

This changed when I came across Jane Hart’s Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter.  Suddenly I realized that I would get the most out of this tool by connecting with others who worked in same field as me.  There are over 400 entries on this list so I just went through and picked out professionals whose work I already followed and others whose descriptions inspired me.

Not long after I started using twitter a new site was launched which has directories for tweeters in all sorts of industries.  JustTweetIt’s Education directory has links for over a hundred people that you could follow and you can easily add yourself to this directory so others can follow your updates.

Now I have a stream of people who I follow.

This means that whenever I choose to tune in to twitter I have the chance to talk about eLearning, communication, design and web 2.0+.  To share articles, pictures, videos and blog posts.  To collaborate, promote, assist and inspire – it is the perfect tool to connect with others who have similar interests.

The 140 character limit really encourages you to be precise about what you are saying, something I really benefit from as I tend to be a bit wordy.

Being able to quickly and easily provide an update on what you are doing and to get feedback from others results in a better work flow and reduces the amount of time it takes to share an idea.

Just now I have twittered the following:

Within 5 minutes I have a number of responses suggesting that what is most important in a new model of communication is the “ability to convey what you want people to know” (@mayhemstudios) and “the message itself, by far” (@alexhosterman).

By considering the way that we communicate and share our lives with others, we have an opportunity to change the way that we work together in the future.

For those of you who are new to the world of Twitter, I suggest you check out Twitter in Plain English Video by CommonCraft below:

I am considering how twitter could be used in business to improve communication and how it could be integrated into the eLearning experience.

I will post more on these topics another day, but for now I leave you with this question . . .

how do you see us communicating in the future?

One the easiest ways to create an online form is by using the Google Docs ‘form’ feature.

Forms allow you to obtain and organize relevant data easily.

They can improve productivity and data integrity as well as providing a great way of getting feedback from trainees and students.

Setting up a form is easy and I suggest that you create one while reading this post (all the links will open in new tabs/windows in your browser).

• Go to the Google Docs site and login/register
• Then create a new form as shown below

• You can then enter the title of the form and any instructions you wish

• Then start on your first question

• You will notice that a ‘Name’ field is added by default
• Add your question title and choose the question type
• For this example I will use a Scale question (think Likert)
• Then fill in the fields and your first question is done!

• There is big Add Question button at the top of the page that you can use to add more questions
• If you want to change the order of the questions simply drag and drop!
• You can preview, edit or delete individual questions
• Once you have finished writing the questions, hit the link to the spreadsheet at the bottom of the page

• This is the link to your form, you can also email the form or embed it in your own webpage

• I strongly suggest editing the confirmation message (i.e. the page that appears after a form has been submitted) to personalize the appearance of your form
• Once a form is complete all the responses are added into a Google Spreadsheet, which can then be exported to a variety of formats (.csv, .xls, .pdf etc)

A couple of other things to note:

• People completing the form do not need to have a Google account or to register for one to complete the form that you create
• Make sure that you understand the level of security of these forms before using them to collect confidential information

These forms can be used to:

• Get feedback from trainees, students etc.
• As a way of brainstorming ideas (especially before a meeting as it gets everyone thinking about what will be discussed)
• To collect information, track expenses, get course feedback etc

Please leave a comment letting others know how you are going to use this knowledge. In what ways can you use forms to improve you productivity?

Oh yeah, the form that was created while this post was being prepared is located here and if you would like to save a copy of these steps please download this PDF file.

Finally, thanks @beckcollect for letting me know this functionality existed