Why I've joined Madonna, President Obama and 14 popes on Twitter

PRESIDENT'S LOG:QUESTION: WHAT do I have in common with Barack Obama, Madonna, Sarah Brown (Gordon Brown's wife), the entire Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour Parties, Stephen Fry, and 14 people who claim to be the pope? Answer: we're all on Twitter. Maybe you're reading this and you still don't know what Twitter really is; and by now, because just everyone is talking about it, you're embarrassed to admit that. Fear not, I'm here to help, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI

Twitter describes itself as a “real-time short messaging service”. It is sometimes described as a “micro-blogging” site. Put simply, it allows you to register, and then to broadcast to the world short SMS-length messages on anything you like, from what you are doing right now to your deepest thoughts (provided you can summarise these in 140 characters of text). So, for example, right now President Obama is counting the calls coming in to him supporting his healthcare reforms (315,023 so far), while one of the 14 Popes has just been eating black pudding-flavour crisps.

What about me? Well, if you should ever decide to “follow” me there (I’m vonprond), then you’ll be able to find out exactly when I’m bored, because that’s usually when I take out my iPhone and do a tweet (the term for writing an entry on your Twitter page).

When I come across something like this, I absolutely have to join it, and so I registered with Twitter the moment a friend told me about it. But I confess that I was at a bit of a loss at first as to what to do with it. I wasn’t inclined to share my preferred crisp flavour, and my brilliant thoughts on the future of higher education just couldn’t be contained in 140 characters. But then I began to get the hang of it, and much more importantly, I began to see its real value in getting information and hearing about developments and trends.

Does Twitter have potential uses in academic life? Absolutely. One group showing the way is the Learning Technologies team at NUI Galway (who also have an excellent blog, learntechgalway. blogspot.com). All of their key staff are active on Twitter, and if you follow them you will be able to share in their experience of using new teaching methods and online technologies, as well as their thoughts on other matters. But otherwise, the Irish academic presence on Twitter is not hugely noticeable. There are some lecturers and professors who tweet, but they are the exception rather than the rule; and as you might expect, they are often the younger academics. One interesting exception is Barry Smyth, Professor of Computer Science at UCD, whose tweets are really informative, on new gadgets. But as far as I know, I am the only Irish university president with a Twitter account.

Actually, just while I’m at it, why are our Irish politicians not on Twitter? Yes, the political parties are there, but by heavens do they all have boring sites. None of them have the slightest idea how to use this medium, and therefore, deservedly, they have very few “followers”. I could quote from one or two of them, but to be honest, it’s all so mind-numbing that I’m afraid you’d fall asleep and wouldn’t read the rest of this column.

And where are the politicians themselves? They really need to be visible on sites such as this, where they can actually connect with the voters; if that’s what they want to do. There are twitterers claiming to be Brian Cowen and Enda Kenny, but I’ll assume they are not the real ones. At least I hope not.

As for me, I am not just on Twitter, but also on Facebook. I was also on Bebo, but really, that’s now so 2008. If you don’t know about Facebook, I’m not even going to explain it, because to be honest if you don’t know what it is then this world is about to become incomprehensible to you, and it’s too late to correct that. But it has become the location of choice for social networking by students, and while a lot of the interaction between them is clearly premised on the certain belief that their parents don’t know how to access it, it is a site where you can hear about their worries and concerns and their suggestions for how things can be done better in the colleges.

In fact, the world of personal communications is changing very rapidly, and what today may be a platform for personal chit-chat may tomorrow be the medium of choice for corporate (or university) decision-making. There is a whole line of work going on to see how methods of online social networking can be harnessed for use in business and government, and I suspect there will be some convergence between these platforms and other educational technology.

So as I log in to Twitter and Facebook every day, I can almost feel the buzz of being where it’s at. So go on, overcome your inhibitions, get in there and be part of it.

• Ferdinand von Prondzynski is president of Dublin City University