Pondering 144 Characters

I have been reflecting about what it says that we want to communicate in 144 characters or less. It seems like just another way for us (people?, Americans?, I'm identifying with the anonymous "they" here, I suppose) to have instant gratification. I want to know what you think, but I don't want to work to understand it or have it be difficult to grasp. So, I want you to say it in the least amount of space possible, 144 characters. Really, what deep, thoughtful, insightful comments can you make in 144 characters? Perhaps if I was on Twitter I would see some examples. Since I only read tweets that get re-posted to other media sources, I probably have a bad sampling. But the good ones I've read are comedic (which I love), not really places of quality communication. Perhaps it is as the introvert I am speaking, a dislike of small talk prevents me from appreciating the place of 144 character communication.
On one of the blogs I read he regularly embeds tweet-ability for his pithy comments. It drives me nuts. It tells me what I'm supposed to take away from his post (in case I am not a capable enough reader to sort that out for myself); it tells me he thinks I'm too lazy to highlight, ctrl c, ctrl v to share it; it tells me I don't really need to read the whole post, I could get the idea if I just read 2-3 144 character posts. I do try to give him the benefit of the doubt, that's not really what he thinks. This allows me to keep reading his posts.
So perhaps 144 character posts have merit in conversational sense, but it worth considering what we are communicating about what thoughtfulness is in communication if we are limiting your characters to 144. I am all for brevity, parsimony, and being concise, but there is a point at which we are too limited to communicate the depth of what we are thinking about. So I think before using tools in learning settings that limit us in this way we need to be careful in our consideration of what we want our students to learn about communication.

First Thoughts

Reflecting on online teaching pedagogy, it seems a little overwhelming to think about how much pedagogy doesn't translate from face-to-face teaching. Things that I do when teach will be lost completely, like making jokes or checking for understanding. On the other hand, teaching online will alleviate some of the in the moment stress of having students check out mentally during class. I do think it is a benefit to not have a required class time that you must be there, but at the same time, I think many people don't make full use of their online classes because they don't have to set aside time to work on it the way that they have to set aside time to attend class. When they are working on classwork, it is good that they can work at their own pace. On the other hand, the biggest stressor to me, is a permanent public record of responses and possibly critiques to my writing (like this and discussion posts), and I really can't see a way around that one.