2/13/11

Twitter!

What are the "affordances" and "constraints" of the technology? In other words, what does the technology allow us to do or prevent us from doing?

 Twitter is a free online service that allows us to communicate with our "followers" as well as those we're "following." It can allow for a large amount of people to communicate with one another as well as stay up to date as to what's going on in people's lives. Naturally, this tool can be used greatly in education mainly in terms of discussions and announcements.

There are some constraints to this technology though. Your updates can only be 140 characters. That means in terms of discussions, you're limited in how much you can say per post. Another constraint is that your updates as well as the updates of those you are following appears on your homepage. If someone you're following is not involved in your discussion, you can get irrelevant things on your homepage. Another constraint is that Twitter is used mainly as a social network rather than an educational resource.

What new skills do we need to teach students?

First, students need to learn how to set up Twitters. Although that is relatively easy, you then have to follow others. Denise, Britt and I found that part to be quite difficult. New members don't show up in search results right away, so we had to type each other's URLs in rather than just search for them.

One very important skill that students need to learn is how to "tag" someone or a topic. The @ symbol is directed towards a user, while the # symbol is direct towards a group or a topic. It can be confusing as first for students to know when to tag, how to tag and which symbol to use. Also, they need to learn the benefits of tagging others and groups.

Another skill that is very important for students to know, is how to limit their responses to 140 characters. Your posts go in order from the bottom up, but the text in each post goes from the top down. It is difficult then to read 3, 4, 5 posts in a row that make up one response. This could be a great tool then for students to learn how to get to the point and prevent run-on sentences

What will I need to do differently in terms of how I teach in the classroom? How will teaching and learning look different?

Using Twitter in my classroom would allow me to have more discussion based assignments. I would have to teach students how to use Twitter and how we're going to use it in the classroom. Teaching and learning will look different, because instead of me facilitating a discussion, Twitter will do it for me. It can be done entirely by students.

How does the technology help me to foster creativity, innovation and some of the other 21st century skills?

 This technology allows students to reach out to one another in many ways. Since you're limited to 140 characters, the students will have to come up with some creative ways to get their point across in such short messages. It helps foster 21st century skills because we're always on the go. Many of us don't like to read or listen to lengthy things anymore. The quicker you can get your point across, the better.

What are some ways I can use this technology in my classroom?

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/5649046/How-To-Use-Twitter-in-the-Classroom

I found this link while researching about using Twitter in classrooms. It can be a very useful tool in classrooms.

Some uses would be to gather real world data, summarize views as Tweets, class discussion (views), keep parents up to date, polls, communicate with other students or experts and monitor learning progress (instead of exit slips).

I found that this would be great for exit slip type of things and to keep parents up to date in my classroom. Some of the many uses are extremely difficult for math classrooms. It is difficult to present math problems on Twitter, however, it is useful to collect opinions about math in general.

Discussion Question: Would you use Twitter in your classroom?