Recently I’ve become completely fascinated by the website tweetping.net. Tweetping shows realtime Twitter activity from around the world in a beautiful way – when a Tweet goes out a little light appears on the map locating the place where the Tweet came from. The tweet lights start appearing when go to the website and it’s beautifully displayed. Here is an example taken after 15 minutes at lunchtime GMT…
I think the reason it fascinates me so much is because it makes me ask so many questions. It gets me curious! For example, does everyone in Japan and South East Asia use Twitter?! why do the lights coming from the USA seem to stop half way along? is that bright light to the right of the middle coming from Istanbul? do people use something else in China? is that Pretoria in South Africa? why is it brighter than Cape Town? does the brightness on the map reflect population size? is that why there are fewer lights in Australia? but then what about India? does it reflect the wealth of an area? connectivity? 4G? what does it look like at different times of the day?
I can offer answers for some of these questions, but the cool thing is it makes me want to share the site with others and discuss it with them too and hear what other people think. All thanks to @FranckErnewein for creating Tweetping!
Yesterday I noticed a Tweet by @mcnairan3 that started with the words ‘Curious Classrooms’. Of course I tapped on the link and found a great post all about engaging students’ curiosity and encouraging learning. You can read it here. The more we can excite curiosity and encourage and ask questions the more we can learn and understand – for ourselves as well as our students.
What made you ask a question today?