Educational Tool: Twitter
[First: BIG thanks to my CDC group Yr1 & YR2 for doing this session with me!!! Three cheers and sorry if I didn't include your pic or your tweet in the post.]
I wrote a post about Twitter and the integration of it as a learning resource and teaching device. It can be a good source for research. Tying in with that is the notion of getting students to use technology to better understand it.
I decided to try some of the ‘Twitter in the Classroom’ techniques. I set up an account called @interactivity, (that is actually the module title) but also our topic of discussion.
I decided to do this as a video post – it’s 7.15 minutes total, so I have written out the main points in the text that follows.
Twitter – in the classroom from Christine Morris on Vimeo.
Is Twitter a good tool for education?
The reason I think this is going to be a great tool for students is they will see real research happening in real time. Not only that, but the opinions behind it. At the moment Twitter is abuzz with the talk about Safari 4 beta, my students can see what are the thoughts about this current technology, what is happening out there, what’s actually going on and how are communities reacting to it.
THE SETUP
My environment is a group of around 15 Higher Education students, with a good knowledge of mac and pc systems.
Session: 3 hour block of time (break in the middle) The plan was to spend some of the session to introduce how to use Twitter. That part of the session took longer than I thought it would. The problem was some of the students had accounts and others (majority) didn’t.
THE GROUP
Nick & Matt, setting up new accounts on Twitter.
The group I choose was a great group that I knew would adapt and roll with it. In the future though for other groups, I would map it out maybe as a 5 week supplement to a course, possibly break it down into 30 minute sessions.
DID THEY UNDERSTAND TWITTER
Because some of the group were completely new to it and they hadn’t seen it before, there was a lot more questions then I had thought there would be. So we ended up spending quite a large part of the session just explaining how to use the service.
We went though how do you direct message or @ reply somebody and also there was some confusion as to what would be public and what would be private. That was something we also discussed as a group. So, concerning our messages, did we want everything protected, which meant that this discussion would then became a private talk, between just this group. Or, as we decided, that the whole nature of twitter is it is very open. The idea behind trying it as an educational tool, was that we would see more value in connecting with other people.
THE TWITTER INTERFACE DILEMMA
Ryan got the fail whale in the session. Just not good!
We set up a discussion about interactivity. Initially, we basically used the Twitter interface.
This interface isn’t very friendly for having a real time conversation. For the students coming into this for the first time, they missed the @ replies, and Direct Messages because they hadn’t realized that you should click on it separately.
They just assumed that it would all appear in their main time line. So that was one issue, just getting past that interface.
After around ten minutes or so they were bored and frustrated by it (understandably!). They didn’t find it useful because they were thinking, ‘well I’ve replied to someone, but another message from someone else came in’ and they wanted to reply to that, and they couldn’t see if someone replied to them… It just became very confused in the session. (and unhappy faces!)
TWEETDECK TO THE RESCUE
Hattie, setting up tweetdeck which made a huge difference to the session.
We chose Tweetdeck in the end for no particular reason, it was just one that had come to my mind. We downloaded it onto all of the machines, and from that point, once everyone had gotten that, it was a far better experience for them. They finally got excited by it.
They could see the messages coming in. Everyone modified their settings so that it would refresh every three minutes. From that point they could see how they could join this massive community and start getting lots of discussion.
SEARCHING
From that point we modified what my initial plan was. We set up search columns within tweetdeck. So as we were discussing a particular subject, they set up a search so that all the results with certain keywords came up into that new column. Also for them, they could see their responses integrated into that main timeline.
WHAT WOULD I CHANGE NEXT TIME
I would break a session up into smaller portions, in order to control the system to make it more effective.
session one: everyone just logging into Twitter, creating accounts, customizing settings
session two: just the group using twitter to have a discussion of a central topic. all members contributing
session three: twitterfall, real time searches for research, links and resources for richer topic discussion.
session four: Connecting. Connect with other schools / colleges / universities. Even within your own school or college, connecting computer departments to art departments, graphics to fashion, discussing a topic that’s of value to both groups but with different opinions and points of views.
NEXT TIME
A few things that would be changed for next attempt. Make sure they all have accounts, and have the same client on their machines. That way you can start the session all on the same playing field.
WILL YOU BE USING TWITTER WITH YOUR CLASS?
If you’re working at a college or university and would also like to have a go at using twitter with another class, please contact me and hopefully we can connect our students!
-END-
Are you already using Twitter in the classroom? What other types of media are you using with your groups? Are you a student and would like to try this type of thing in your sessions?
Tags: discussion, education, higher education, integration, interactivity, tools, twitter, twitterfall, video, vimeo
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 7:21 am and is filed under All Posts, Education and Technology, My Opinion and Rants, Videos and Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
I really would like to hear how this goes. The alternative uses for Twitter seem to be maybe where its strength may be. I had contemplated about setting up a generic one for students so that everyone could contribute as to if there was an extra session, or running late, or general lecture information. 
