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The wonderfully fascinating world of Twitter Bots had my wheels spinning all week.  For the first few days, honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what they were, exactly.   I followed Professor Flores’s advice and started with the following “conversation.” (I wasn’t sure if I had to “follow” this bot first in order for “it” to reply or if it would respond to a non-follower…still not sure, I guess, since I chose to follow before I reached out for advice.)

Here’s what I got back:

Still, I wonder, how do you search for bots without using a bot???  When I searched the twitter engine it gave some pretty foggy results. …Maybe google??  I found it amusing that when you did search up a bot you had to look under the “people” tab to refine your results…

So, within minutes I was following two random bots, waiting for “something” to happen.  Eventually, I got some posts on my feed that looked like this

And this….

I got tired of looking at these posts so I actually unfollowed both bots within a few days.  Yep, I broke up with my first two bots…they weren’t my type.

I also explored the link suggested on last week’s announcement page to figure out what bots I might be interested in…..this was a great tool to get lowdown on a bunch of bots. Here are some selections:

thelongestpoem

This one makes me chuckle….

WhyCantWeDate

Interesting….only 130 followers????? Hmmmmmm

A few more…

IsItArtBot

MuseumBot

Next, I decided to give @KairosHotbots another shot by asking the following:

This is where they led:

and….

Still not quite my speed…..

 

Soon, I found a bot that tweets out a new metaphor every two minutes (not 1 as the name suggests).  I couldn’t believe it!  My feed was full and my phone was dinging off the hook with notifications…..deleted within hours.  I couldn’t understand any of it.

But, I thought this was a good concept and started thinking how all this can apply to my students.  For sure a bot that delivers a grade-appropriate vocab or grammar tip of the day would be feasible and beneficial.  (I’ll add that to my list of to do’s)

The closest I got was this…

Good for adults…maybe not so much for kids???

In the end, Twitter bots left me lukewarm.  

The concept:  intriguing.  

The final products:  less than enthralling.  

All good food for thought, however.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out our fellow #netnarr blogger, Kevin’s post and the Twitter bot HE MADE, it’s a must-see (and follow).

A few final ponderings….

Bots: “mainly” for entertainment?  Education?  Inspiration? Any of these?  All of these?  One more than the other, overall?  If so, why?  I guess there are many reasons for them…some for profit, in some ways, I guess……

I’ve been inspired to do a little experimenting of my own…..I made another twitter account and intend to only follow twitter bots.  Just curious to see what it would feel like to have no “human” interaction….and what it feels like to send a tweet out into the world with no followers…..

So, I again, returned to my trusty KairosHotBots and even thanked it for its help (can we make a bot that teaches manners??)  I intend to follow as many bots as I humanly can…and I wonder, do all bots respond to humans?  or just some?  testing…testing…