So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

So, the guide for this entry says:

Your final journal entry should be a substantial one that reflects on your experiences in the course. Ask yourself,

• What do I understand differently now?
• How has my thinking on unit topics either changed or solidified?
• What, based on my professional experience placement, works in theory but not in practice?
• Where are there still gaps?
• What will I need to watch out for in my teaching?

So, hmm, what do I understand differently? Well, I've seen a range of things on the Internet used in a lot more useful ways than I had seen previously, and used in ways which are not about the ego of the person writing or in the video. Twitter is a prime example of this, previously it had seemed like a useless tool that people used for self promotion. Now, after doing the research on it I find that there is more too it than that, some people use it for communicating ideas and group problem solving.

Where else has my understanding changed? Well, the educational use of the Internet. I had thought of it in the past as a research mechanism (which is what my mentoring teacher thinks of it as well), but I have been shown a wide range of ways to use it in and out of the classroom. However, I am still not sure how most of it can be used in the mathematics classroom. So I understand the potential, the risks and the appropriate way of doing things - all I'm lacking is how to apply it (which is what I'm missing in other subjects as well).

I've also seen the youth digital literacy issue in my classes as well, student's who know how to do things, but don't really understand what to do. We gave out a year 12 assignment which involves using the Great Circle Mapper, and many students didn't like the idea of using an online tool or submitting part of their assignment electronically. {Aside: of course, some students weren't clear that if they keep going east or west around the world they will get back to where they started ...} There's a lot talked about teacher expectations of students and how it effects outcomes, but no one talks about the expectations which students have about their education and how they have difficulty when things go against that.

Also, interactive whiteboards are an interesting issue. The one that irks me the most is that the computer has to be started, logged in and all that rubbish (network security programs) needs to finish before you can start loading the IWB software, an my mentor can tend to leave it to the last minute to start the process (I don't have a password). There is also the essential requirement of having an ordinary whiteboard and whiteboard marker as backup, because you never quite know when the power it going to drop out on you (thankfully we had a pen that lesson, the students were disappointed that the lesson didn't stop though). But its been good to be able to prepare stuff to display: it turns out I have a tendency to make spelling mistakes when I'm thinking ahead of myself, something the year 12s were quite happy to pick up on.

I think there are gaps everywhere, some I know about (timing in lessons, making decent plans and great resources), and other's I don't. Actually, this reminds me of Rumsfeld:

there are known "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.

Its a great, insightful statement that one, its a pity the media jumped on him for being an idiot when he said it. But it applies here, there are things I know I don't know and I am sure there are things I don't even realise I don't know.

As for this blog, well, I haven't used it since the last assignment was due. So the title was picked deliberately.



As for stuff I need to watch out for: I am my own worst enemy.

Protecting Identity with Avatars

 My magazine article is done. However to keep is pretty looking I've hosted it on Scribd. Either read below or read at Protecting Identity with Avatars. Downloading is also available.

Digital Alan

So this post is a scary heap of images of me. Just from a whole heap of different avatar creators.

My Avatar Editor
The first tool off the ranks is My Avatar Editor, formally Mii Editor. That previous name is important, as the tool has the same graphics and range of options as the Mii Editor on the Nintendo Wii. It can be used to create stylised versions of people. The tool is very similar to that on the Wii (sub-categories on the Wii are categories in the editor), so will be easy for Wii owners to use. The avatar can be saved as jped or png images, but is not saved on the editor's server, which is an element of safety for classroom users. To the right is an avatar I made using this editor, which is very close to the one I use on my Wii.



Meez
The Meez service allows the use to create avatars, primarily for the use in the service's own games, however they can be exported to different online services or saved to the local computer. For longterm storage and editing, an account with the service is required (but free). The avatars are based off a lot of prebuilt components, a large proportion of which must be paid for with money or site coinage (not sure how its obtained). Personally, I had quite a few difficulties with this site because I could not see the selection options, making it difficult to know what I was changing.
On the right is the animated avatar that I made of myself using this service. Yes, that is Clone Trooper armor from Star Wars, I couldn't help myself and this is about self expression.

Build Your Wild Self

This service is run by the New York Zoo and Aquarium and allows the user to create an avatar containing a range of animal components. The base image is boy or girl, so it will suggest that the age and gender of the user. What I like about this service is that the creation of the avatar could be used as a self-expression exercise, where an explanation about one's self is given for each animal piece used. The one downside with this service is that its not actually intended for avatars, a copy of the image is obtained by bringing up the printable version from which the image can be saved. The image should then be edited to remove the user's name.
One the right is the image I created. I have reindeer horns because I often get myself into arguments which I find it difficult to get out of; bat wings because I would love to have wings and the bat style best fit my personality; and the gibbon arms, well, the hands looked cool at the time, not sure how I can relate to swinging through trees though.

Simpsons Avatar

The Simpsons Movie site gives users the ability to create an avatar which looks like a character from The Simpsons (and Futurama to a lesser extent). The user can select from a range of predrawn components for each part of their avatar. Some of the components are age indicative, particularly the child body size.
On the right is the avatar I created with the site. I did have difficulty with saving the image and in the end I obtained it by screen capturing and saving.










DoppleMe

DoppleMe is a free service which allows users to create an avatar with or without creating an account on their service. Users pick between a range of options for facial expressions, hair, clothes, etc. However some of the content is only available to logged in users and then some of that content is only available with continued use of the service. With out creating an account the avatar can be saved as an image file. When logged in, it can either be saved locally or embedding links are provided for full image or face closeup.

To the right is the DoppleMe I created, linked to the account I created. I went for a suit this time, I felt like something different.

Evolver

Evolver is a tool to create high quality 3D avatars with (almost) photo-realistic appearance. They provide two methods to create the avatars: face feature recognition via an uploaded photo or self creation by blending reference faces. The latter option I found to be very difficult as you need to determine which two faces you wish to blend for a given facial feature, and how much of each face you need to pick. Avatars from this service may not be appropriate for use in online services, as a realistic image of yourself is the same as using a photo. Even if the avatar is not based on the user, it may attract unwanted attention. Additionally, the avatar you create with this service could be useful in other application.
On the right is the avatar I created with this service by uploading a photo. Its a fair creation apart from the hair - I couldn't find one of the right messiness.

Avatars in Education

So, I've had an idea for my magazine article: avatars in education
The structure of the idea will be:
Overview
Discussion of their use
Discussion of the types available
Conclusion

The types discussion will be the most fun, as it means I'll have to try out a whole heap of different services. Avatars incoming!

Summary 3: Does Twitter have a role in education?

Twitter is described as a microblogging and social networking service in which users communicate with everyone by short messages (“Twitter”, n.d.). This description I find interesting, as I am certain the term “microblogging” did not exist when I first heard of Twitter in 2007, when a colleague described it as “Facebook status updates without Facebook”. This lead to a view that Twitter, with its “What are you doing?” prompt, was about “solipsism and sound-bite communication” (academHacK, 2008). However the use of Twitter has evolved, and is now used for professional and social interaction and communication. To reflect this, Twitter's promt was changed to “What's happening?” in November 2009. The question is, is there a role for Twitter in education?

Such a question can only be answered by knowing more about Twitter itself. When a user joins Twitter they create a profile from which they can start following other users and sending messages. The messages, called “tweets”, are short messages up to 140 characters in length. This limit is the same character limit on SMS messages for mobile phones, as users have the option to tweet to and from their phone. Tweets can contain a hashtag, a word or conjoined words preceded by the # character, to make all tweets containing that hashtag easier to find through search tools. When a user “follows” someone, they are essentially listening to that person's tweets. A user will also have followers, people who are listening to their tweets. The default privacy level of a Twitter account is that it is open to all, any internet user is capable of observing the profile and all tweets of an individual user. The alternative privacy level makes the twitterer's profile and tweets private only to approved followers.

The two big ideas for using Twitter in education are professional development and as a communication backchannel. The professional development use revolves around using Twitter to network with educators locally or around the world. By tweeting an idea, an educator can receive feedback from their network, in the form of comments or links to related content. Feedback could also be received from people outside of the network, such as professionals in the particular field of the idea. The educator is also able to reply to other peoples' ideas with their own thoughts. The Twitter4Teachers wiki (http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com/) contains a large list of educators using Twitter, sorted by subject area. This list is publicly editable, and some teachers have included their location (I am now following three Australian maths teachers to see what they tweet), with some even including the name of their school. Professional discussions also occur through hashtag discussions, such as #edchat.

A backchannel is a communication channel which is used to provide feedback and ask questions of a presenter while they are giving a presentation (“Backchannel”, n.d.). Twitter is used at conferences as a backchannel, with hashtags provided to group the discussion. Currently, the ACEC: Digital Diversity conference in Melbourne is using the hashtag #acec2010 (http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23acec2010), however the discussion has the most relevance to conference participants.

Twitter backchannels have been used in higher education institutions with some success. At one university students use the backchannel to ask questions, give comments and post related material, with the Twitter feed being shown during the lecture (Young, 2009). The professor has the ability to reply to questions or comments and explore related material provided by students. A different university has found that student participation in lecturers with large student numbers increased when they used a Twitter backchannel (Ferenstein, 2010). The university provided the option for non-connected students to give teacher assistants hand written thoughts and questions to be placed on the Twitter conversation. Participation in the Twitter conversation enabled students who did not like participating in vocal discussions to ask questions and contribute (Ferenstein, 2010; Young, 2009). Interestingly, discussion on the Twitter backchannel does not stop when the lecture stops, it continues going, particularly when “something came up outside of class that reminded them [students] of material from class time” (academHack, 2008, para 4).

Gallicano (2010) suggests using a Twitter backchannel only for large classes, as there are different techniques available for building relationships in small classes, and providing a guarantee to the students that questions on the backchannel will receive a response. These are important points, a student will not use a communication tool if they feel that they will be the only person using it. By guaranteeing they will get a response, students will be more likely to start using the tool and then start answering each others questions, leading to collaborative learning. There is then the possibility of positive interaction with external participants in the conversation, providing alternative input and feedback.

A common alternative use of Twitter in the classroom is using the open communication of Twitter to get a “sense of how varied are the things people are doing around the globe” (academHacK, 2008, para 6). This can be achieved through a tool such as Twitter's Public Timeline (http://twitter.com/public_timeline), which shows tweets as they happen, or TwitterVision (http://beta.twittervision.com/), which shows the public timeline tweets on a world map (for location specified tweets). A different option is that students, individually or as a class, could follow important people or organisations to receive updates on what they are doing or thinking. With the range of people and organisations on Twitter, these could provide an excellent source of information. However, the source might not always provide useful information, for example its one thing to find out when a space walk at the International Space Station is going to start (NASA, 2010b), but its another to find out which song was used for waking up the astronauts (NASA, 2010a).

Twitter has been used in an interesting collaborative task in which students from across the United States of America and Canada and classes from the United Kingdom, China, Qatar and Thailand produced a story (manyvoices, 2008). They used a single Twitter account and added to the story in one hundred and forty, 140 character pieces. Any online collaboration tool could have been used for this task, but Twitter was most likely used for the character limit. Other attempts at using Twitter in the classroom have had mixed success; Russell (2008) reported that her class enjoyed a task to use Twitter over a 48 hour time period, where as Melander (2008) reported that her class did transition from blogs to Twitter well. My concern over the previous two reports is that there was no objective or direction in their use of Twitter.

The privacy options of Twitter make a tricky situation for education. By opting to hide one's tweets, the advantages of contact with the wider community are lost. However it does mean that the privacy of the individual students is maintained in a safe environment. It may be that the use of Twitter in classes is decided at a school level where parent and teacher community can come to the most appropriate decision for that community. There are other microblogging services available for closed communities, such as Edmodo, Yammer and ShoutEm (Ritchie, 2009).

Twitter is a communication tool which, when used properly, can be used to assist with an interactive, participative and collaborative class. However, determining the way in which Twitter is used for a particular class may be difficult and time consuming. Even if Twitter can not be used in class, it still a extensive research for educator personal development and networking.



References

AcademHacK (2008, January 23) Twitter for Academia [web log post]. Retrieved from http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/

Backchannel (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 9, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backchannel

Ferenstein, G. (2010, March 1) How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement, Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com

Gallicano, T (2010, January 30) In-Class Tweeting in a Large Lecture Class [web log post]. Retrieved from http://prpost.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/in-class-tweeting-in-a-large-lecture-class/

manyvoices (2008) @manyvoices. Retrieved from http://manyvoices.wikispaces.com/

Melander, N. (2008, December 5) 14 Days of Twitter Part One: “I Hate Twitter” [web log post]. Retrieved from http://digitalmindsblogger.blogspot.com/2008/12/14-days-of-twitter-part-one-i-hate.html

NASA (2010a, April 9) Wake up song at 8:51 p.m. EDT... [Twitter status update]. Retrieved from http://twitter.com/NASA/status/11853458636

NASA (2010b, April 9) STS-131 first spacewalk began at 1:31a ET... [Twitter status update]. Retrieved from http://twitter.com/NASA/status/11865719769

Ritchie, M (2009, April 24) Chirping about Twitter, TES Connect. Retrieved from: http://www.tes.co.uk

Russell, K.M. (2008, January 17) “48 Hours of Twitter” class assignment [web log post]. Retrieved from http://teachingpr.blogspot.com/2008/01/48-hours-of-twitter-class-assignment.html

Twitter (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 7, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

Young, J (2009, April 8) Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class – via Twitter, The Chronicle. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com

to utter a succession of small, tremulous sounds

Faculty Focus: Twitter in Higher Education: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty
The paper is on a survey the authors performed of about 2000 higher education professionals, mostly self described lecturers and academic leaders. Of 1958 respondents, 30.7% use Twitter, while 12.9% reported trying it. Of those that do not use it, a large number report not having the time and question its educational use. The individual response to why they don't use it are interesting, with tidbits like

I have enough other ways to waste time, none of which are as silly as this one
I know how to use it, I've seen it demoed several times, but I don't have the neither the time nor the need for it. It could be useful if used in moderation, but most people don't know how to do that.
From what I know of Twitter and heard about the types of comments on it, I do not see it as a valuable tool for higher education.
Logical arguments cannot well be delivered in short bursts; students must be able to follow arguments in paragraphs.
Perpetuates poor written and oral communication skills
Seems like yet another flash-in-the-pan tool that will be obsolete in three years. Why bother learning to use it if it has such a short shelf life?

The comment about use in moderation is important and echoes negative comments made previously about it being a distraction - if people can't moderate it may be a distraction. Asking if the survey respondents would use Twitter in the next two years, the majority of respondents said they wouldn't use it in any capacity. Those that use Twitter use if for networking with colleagues, participation in conference back channels and keeping up with news and events. They received some interesting examples of the use of Twitter educationally. Those that stopped using did so because they were not finding much value and it was requiring too much time. Its an interesting document.

xkcd: Seismic Waves

This is an interesting look at people using Twitter to discuss events as they happen - and it shows the use of the service without moderation on the part of the users ....
xkcd is drawn by Randall Munroe and released under Creative Commons 2.5 License


Teaching PR: "48 Hours of Twitter" class assignment
In this post the author describes an assignment she set where her class group had to make five tweets over a 48 hour period. It sounds a bit strange and there is no stated outcome other than experimenting with the tool. Her post makes it sound like it went well and the students learnt how to use it from a PR perspective. The idea just seems a bit flat to me.


Digital Minds: 14 Days of Twitter Part One: “I Hate Twitter”
In this post the author tries to repeat the class assignment set above, but over 14 days rather than 2. My interpretation of her post is that it was a failure. Apparently the social media class had been using blogs well, but must not of made the transition. I think between these two posts theres a clear statement: using the tool is not an assignment in itself - it can just as easily work as fail.


YouTube: Twitter in the classroom?
A news vid put together by the University of Minnesota discussing its involvement with some local high schools. The teachers had identified that students were using social media technologies outside of the classroom so they brought them inside the classroom to improve engagement, participation and digital literacy. A short positive video, though biased towards the university.


TwitterVision
An interesting site which shows tweets as they happen on a world map. Only works for Twitter users which have set their location and provides not obvious control mechanism over what is displayed.


How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement
This is a newpaper like article with a video about a university professor who started using Twitter as a discussion board in the large lectures. They found that there were too many students in a large room for conversation to occur and Twitter enabled them to contribute regularly. Many students used laptops or smartphones and students that wished to have handwritten input could contribute it to teaching assistants at the end of the lectures. It allowed shy students to contribute and the discussion of topics continued outside of the classroom. Some students found that the Twitter record was an excellent study aide.


@manyvoices
This is the kind of thing you love to read about: students from classrooms in multiple countries writing a story together .... on Twitter. The students contributed their entry (of 140 characters or less) into the same Twitter account and the story ended with its 140th entry. The students came from 5-9 grade classes from across the United States of America and Canada and classes from the United Kingdom, China, Qatar and Thailand (all international schools). Its one of those ideas that makes your heart glow, international collaboration at that age and to create something together. The only advantage I can see in the use of Twitter over other services is the character limit, requiring each entry to be concise and still flow into the others.
I'll admit that I haven't actually read the story yet ...


ZNet Asia: Social network Tweets to classes
Another positive story about using Twitter as a communication back channel, this time in Singapore. The lecturer states that he insists that only Twitter is used in the classroom.


The PR Post: In-Class Tweeting in a Large Lecture Class
This page is a slideshare with voiceover. I think the best way to summaries it is the notes I made while listening

• in class tweeting for large classes only, have other means to connect in small classes
• some students mored focused, some distracted
• optional
• collaboration and interactive learning environment
• sharing information during lecture
• some student sharing  by direct replying rather than hashtag
• some won't answer in class, but will on twitter
• its another method of developing relationships
• enables after class discussion
• guarantee that someone will respond back
• remember "Google never forgets"

Examiner.com: Is live tweeting disruptive to the classroom?
A Twitter discussion on the topic by PR educators provides interesting information on the pros and cons of back channels


Inside Higher Ed: Tweeting in Class
A different take on audience tweeting during presentations:

Suddenly, I’m not just the one at the front just dispensing everything, and the students aren’t just sort of milling about doing their thing — we’ve actually got a team of people working together. And Twitter is the glue that holds the team together. W. Gardner Campbell

Mentioning that all students can participate during tweeting. Though at the end of this article they mention the danger of things getting quoted out of context, or just plain incorrectly.


Twenty-Nine Interesting Ways* to use Twitter in the Classroom
An interesting presentation of a few ideas of using Twitter in the classroom, most of which have been observed by now.


So I think I have enough now, even though I have finished that initial list yet. :)

to titter; giggle

danah boyd on twitter
The link is to the archive of the twitter tag on danah boyd's blog (three posts in all), it seemed more relevant as she doesn't discuss the use of Twitter in education, but some points on Twitter in general. In the first post she discusses the result that 40% of the conversation on Twitter is "pointless babble", comparing it to spoken words and suggesting that more than 40% of that would count as pointless babble. Her argument is that human beings are social, so they will use any tool available to be social and that is a good thing.
The second post is about the misrepresentation of the results Nielson survey on Twitter, with the statement being "teens don't tweet". There was then a big outcry against this on twitter by teens who tweet. The survey result was that 16% of Twitter users were in the 2-24 age bracket. She points out that hte methadology used to get this result is questionable and points out the number of social groups that are over represented on Twitter. Her interpretation of the Nielson result was that

Everyone expects social media to be used primarily by the young but OMG OMG OMG old farts are just as likely to be using Twitter as young folks! Like OMG.

She then commented on the response on Twitter and her observations of the responces and the group categories of the respondants.
The third post is about an academic paper (in review at the time) on the conventions of retweeting and that she has released onto her blog. In the brief, brief summary she makes the point that in retweeting.

There are authorship issues and attribution issues. The fidelity of a message often gets corrupted as it spreads, revealing the ways in which retweeting has become the modern day incarnation of the “Telephone Game.”

The "Telephone Game" I'm guessing is an American name for Chinese Wispers (confirmed by Wikipedia). It is a very interesting and apt analogy, showing how that even in the Web 2.0 digital age information can still get "corrupted".

Laura Walker: Nine great reasons why teachers should use Twitter
In this post Walker discusses the professional community which can be created by teachers using Twitter. She highlights that it can be used to connect teachers from around the world for self-awareness, activity suggestions and feedback and cutting down the time used to develop ideas. She gives an example of a teacher than can use Twitter to find quality answers questions faster than a generic Google search. The character limit of tweets is highlighted as a tool to develop concise, to the point, messages (without using sms speak). Comments on the post are supportive of the suggestions.

Twitter4Teachers Wiki
A big list of teachers on twitter, sorted by subject area and it gives locations where possible (even schools).

TES Connect: Chirping about Twitter
This newspaper like article starts off by discussing that a UK report has suggested that tools like Twitter be included in the education curriculum. They make the point:

It is tempting to think of Twitter as a gimmicky social networking site for media darlings, but, as with most technological gimmicks, it’s what you do with it that counts.

It gives examples of teachers using Twitter educationally in the classroom. In one interesting example, a teacher collected pictures of the snow fall around the United Kingdom, with locations, from people he knew on Twitter. As a class activity, the pictures and comments were collated onto a Google Map which apparently made a good educational activity for the students. One interviewee comments that by using Twitter her students know they can talk to her about technology. It also discusses some pros and cons to Twitter. Something I haven't seen before is the following.

There are other, safer options. Services such as Edmodo (designed specifically for education communities), Yammer and ShoutEm offer closed communities with the advantages of communicating as an online group. These services allow teachers to maintain a separate Twitter account and followers for professional purposes, but pupils can still benefit from online group discussions and continued learning in a safe environment.

Its good to know such tools exist.

to tremble with excitement or the like

Blog by Carol: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Education
So this list of ideas is based on a similar list of ideas for business by someone else. Quite a few of the 'ideas' are suggestions on how to use Twitter in general, not just in education. Things like making yourself human by following a variety of people, discussing things of interest to a range of people and limiting self promotion.
Its first point on what to tweet is:

Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”

Which I have seen quite a few places already and its intersting as Twitter itself has changed the question to "What's happening" - is this a responce to Twitter being used in emergancies before emergancy services have been contacted? The list also suggests using Twitter to ask questions. It highlights some positives and negatives (cast in perspective of criticism and answer) with those of interest to me that its a time waster that needs a usage strategy, thought it can work towards directing student attention, provide an avenue for questions and news often occurs first on Twitter before other locations. The last of those does require you to know what you are looking for though.

Most of the comments were thanking the author for the list, however one of interst was

Twitter is defintely going to be the future of collaborative learning. Tweet your question and get answered in seconds! We are moving from a traditional learning to system to a more on demand learning. I want to learn what i like, the way i want.

This is an intersting opinion on the topic and I'm attempting to see if the commentor says more at their own page - the answer is they don't.

Blog by Carol: How to Teach with ... Twitter
At first this is an overview on how to use Twitter, however the juicy stuff later has things she didn't mention in the previous blog post. She suggests using it to keep up to date with other educational people, who may but out interesting thoughts or links (and suggesting you should do the same). When in class or a conference, using hashtags is suggested as it gives an easily searchable term for tweets to be retrieved. It also suggests keeping your tweets to a single topic.

Verso wiki: Twitter
This page suggests using Twitter as a secondary communication channel in educational courses. Its first few examples of course and system updates I personally don't like - they are the detached, non-personal messages that have been used in other communication mediums which really should be "check the website" content. The examples of self-reflection, student equion and answer and supplimentary information are good. A secondary communication channel should be an optional communication channel and this is sort of communication which encourages participation. The page points out that the default openness of Twitter means that outsiders can participate and contribute to the course. It also makes this point
"Since Twitter is available through SMS, it can provide a low-threshold mobile communication channel.". Honestly, not sure what they mean by this and may be something to research later.

to talk lightly and rapidly

So the title comes from the dictionary definition of twitter, but does not entirely represent this post.


Can We Use Twitter for Educational Activities?
Gabriela GROSSECK and Carmen HOLOTESCU
Paper to be presented at The 4th International Scientific Conference eLSE "eLearning and Software for Education", Bucharest, April 17-18, 2008
Starts off describing microblogging systems, of which Twitter is apparently not the only one (at this stage I think I'll keep the scope to Twitter though). States that "940 thousand twitterers in March", I'm assuming thats March of 2008, and that "only half of the users with accounts on Twitter are actually active and have at least a note in the last month" - both of those details are most likely out of date and should be checked up on. The authors list uses of Twitter as blog promotion, PR, politics, news, networking and a tool for small tasks.


They then go off on a tangent discussing Romanian twitterers, a Twitter/Google Maps combination one of them put together (pretty cool, but limited to known Romanian users) and then a Romanian microblogging platform.


The some of educational uses they comment on are:

• Classroom community
• Collaboration: with writing, inter-school or international, project management
• Responding to readings for later
• Exploring language

They follow this with interesting points on the positives and negatives of Twitter and some measures that should be taken when using it. They conclude that it makes a good tool for professional development and student collaboration and models good pedagogy by responding to students' needs. Personally, I think this is a rather strong conclusion when compared to what they stated in the bulk of the article.


Wikipedia: Twitter
As to be expected from Wikipedia when its a topic of notable public interest, the article on Twitter is very good with a range of information on all of the topics relating to Twitter. Of interest, it states that Twitter is funded by venture capitalists and currently has no revenue. It has a breakdown of Twitter content performed by a company in 2009. It gives the statistic that 11% of Twitter users are between 11-17, though notes that this is changing  (how old is it?). If Twitter has such a low school-age usage, how difficult will it be to have students using it in class? It also gives a large list of the usage of Twitter in a variety of environments. While there is a "in education" section, the interesting entries from an education perspective are in the other categories: updates on NASA missions, political campaigns/debates, emergency situations. Observing these things, in real time or as a history, would be a good way to show what happened and people thought.


Wired Campus Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class -- via Twitter
An interesting article about a Professor at Pennsylvania State University. What he does is have a dual screen system with one screen showing the lecture material and the second screen showing the Twitter feed. Students are encouraged to tweet ideas, questions or related material for the professor to then discuss. Its passing relevant notes in class. According to the article:

his hope is that the second layer of conversation will disrupt the old classroom model and allow new kinds of teaching in which students play a greater role and information is pulled in from outside the classroom walls

Its an interesting system for University courses, but could it be applied to a primary or secondary school?

academHacK: Twitter for academia
The author starts off by describing that he initially viewed Twitter as "solipsism and sound-bite communication", which to be perfectly honest is how I viewed it myself. However, he set a class assignment where everyone set up an account and then had to follow everyone else and describes it as "one of the better things I did with that class". The reasons he gives is that it allowed conversations to continue outside of the classroom, with real world relationships to class content getting tweeted, and it allowed a sense of community to develop. He then mentions the other benefits of twitter such as following professionals, famous people (really?), instant feedback and a public note pad. The interesting points he makes is that the short message form of Twitter actually teaches grammar, as the messages require specific form and punctuation for them to make sense. This then flows on to rules of written communication and what happens when you change them.

His last suggestion is one I want to try:

Writing Assignments: Remember that game you used to play where one person would start a story, the next person would continue it, etc. . .Okay try this on Twitter.

A Flash of Inspiration

Going to check the ELPC twitter feed and I was hit by a flash of inspiration - lets do Twitter in Education as the next topic.

This post is going to be a list of things to look at in coming days.

• Web 2.0 Teaching Tools twitter tweets for higher education: blog post (2007) with thoughts and links
• Can we use Twitter for educational activities?: Conference paper on Scribd, should check for similar tagged items
• Blog by Carol 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Education: quick overview shows an interesting list, comments should be interesting
• How to Use Twitter for Education (in a Real Classroom): YouTube video to watch, some comments
• Using TWITTER in Education: pretty bad colour scheme but a big list of links with comments
• Laura Walker Nine great reasons why teachers should use Twitter: Large amount of "stuff", lots of comments and trackbacks
• Faculty Focus Twitter in Higher Education: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty: wants an email address for a document, lets hope I don't get burned ...
• Wired Campus Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class -- via Twitter: Newspaper type article, sounds interesting and probably has stuff to follow up on
• Wired Campus A Professor's Tips for Using Twitter in the Classroom: Another newspaper like article

And this was the first page of Google results for "education use twitter", the missing one was the conference paper repeated on slideshare.

NCIS Time!