I’ve been reading several of the #etmooc blog posts and tweets about sharing which were posted during and after the session (which I missed because I was getting a broken tooth repaired). Obviously a lot of people talked about the importance of sharing and collaboration, but a couple mentioned their concern about what, and how much, to share.

I was not at all interested in Twitter initially because I thought it was only people, mainly so-called celebrities, incessantly sharing what they had for breakfast and the like, with little else. That’s definitely over-sharing in my book. The reality of twitter for me, following a few select educational tweeters, is completely different. So many useful links to sites and blogs, so many insightful comments. That being said, I agree with the person (sorry, can’t find the tweet again to acknowledge) who felt that a few personal tweets in the mix helped us to know the people we were following a little better, as a whole person. I don’t necessarily expect people to have different twitter accounts for professional and personal, and I’m sure many tweeters have colleagues who are also friends. I don’t have a problem if the tweets occasionally are about things other than education and technology – even what they had for breakfast, if it was a great breakfast. It’s easy enough to skip over those tweets if they are of no interest to me.

Someone else talked about knowing how to filter the content and links they shared so that they weren’t over-sharing. Again, I agree with those who felt that it was better to share and let the recipients filter. I’d rather get it all, decide what I want to read now, what I’ll need to save in Pocket, or what I’m not interested in.

I suspect that some members of my faculty think I’m an ‘over- sharer’. I regularly send out links, articles, resources, but often add the tag ‘use, modify, delete, as you see fit’. I hope they would prefer that I allow them to self-filter, rather than miss a potentially useful resource.