Twitter in teaching and learning part 2
Storytelling: Tom is also participating in the @ManyVoices Project (here). Basically this is an ongoing collaborative story being written by 140 different school students across the globe. Each student uses Twitter to write part of the story keeping to the 140 character limit. Once the student has finished their bit another student continues the tale. In Tom’s own words “One of the best aspects of using Twitter for children to author creative writing is the character limit - those reluctant writers do not feel over-awed by a large blank page. The short paragraph they have to contribute is manageable and offers greater accessibility.”
The updates are also placed on a wiki so that you can view the story so far. After the 140th entry the story will be collectively edited before being publishing as a small book.
You can read details of Tom’s participation here.
Exploration: Another interesting use is also provided by Tom (sent in response to a question I sent out on the Twitter network “Could twitter be used for teaching and learning?” – thanks Tom). GeoTweets - Inviting your network into the classroom” describes an exercise involving Google Earth. Avoiding a simple show and tell exercise Tom asked his Twitter network to provide clues (via tweets) as to their geographical location. Tom’s class were then required to find them using the scraps of information. A helpful hint list is also provided, I like this one: “if you think your network isn’t quite at that tipping point where it will give live results, then you can prep it before hand and ask for specific responses a couple of days before. Ask others to pass on the request to their network - spread the word a bit.”
Group Work: Another school-based example (schools… HE please take note) is described by Clarence Fisher. “Twitter in the Classroom” looks at a possible assignment involving small groups of students using twitter to support project work. Essentially each member of the group will have a twitter account and each member will then “simply pull the RSS feeds of those people in their network (five? six? kids working on the same topic) into their iGoogle homepagest. This would allow them to stay in touch with each other and also give them a tool to ask questions of those who they are working with, post suggestions, share resources, etc.” Clarence obviously points out that the signal vs noise ratio might be an issue together with the group being small in size leading in turn to small benefits. But he ends positively “I also know that my own network is sometimes used for serious learning, and other times to cajole, laugh, and make general contact with each other. We are human. That is our reality. Their network will be the same.”.
Final part tomorrow.
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