Twitter in teaching and learning part 3
Okay third and final part.
Darren Rowse lists 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers. He started off using Twitter to: improve the quality of his blogs * network with other bloggers *widen his readership * grow his profile and drive traffic to his blogs.
He lists 9 benefits, most of which are marketing oriented but nevertheless can be extended to the educational context. They include: research tool; reinforcing your personal brand; promoting content; extending readership; networking; preview content; speed linking; story gathering and finding out what people really think. Taking a look at those most relevant to education:
Research Tool: echoing Tom Barrett’s observation (see previous post) you can ask your network of followers to provide examples, answers to difficult questions or for a straw poll on ideas. As an example Darren posted a question to his network and received 30 responses within 10 minutes. This is linked to another benefit, previewing blog content, in which draft blog posts are placed on the network for comment and suggestions.
Networking and the creation of community: again academhack refers to this in first post in this series. The emphasis is that twitter allows you to electronically network on a more intimate level. It build up a certain level of camaraderie similar to that experienced when you spend 3 or 4 days with someone at a conference.
Find out what people really think: this is interesting Darren observes that “that people have a certain level of honesty and rawness on Twitter that they sometimes mask or hide on their blogs”. He reckons this is down to the 140 characters limit which forces them “to strip away some of the politically correct language and just say what they mean”. So you get a sense of what people are really thinking on a topic.
Reflection: the very excellent Educausehave produced 7 Things you should know about Twitter. This is a very good introduction for first timers detailing possible applications and downsides. The main benefit again relates to using Twitter to encouraging students to engage in metacognition exercises in which they reflect and exchange thoughts about a topic. Obviously group blogging and wikis can be used for a similar exercises however again the character limit forces the user to be brief and to the point which as Educause points out is “an important skill in thinking clearly and communicating effectively”. Additionally Twitter can be used by attendees at a con¬ference to share thoughts about particular sessions with others at the event and those unable to attend.
Library use: Stephen Francoeur cites examples of library use, Reference services and Twitters, in which he suggest that libraries could use a Twitter address allowing people to “follow” and “learn about events, new books, and other announcements. Twitter could also be used to announce responses to library user questions, which might be answered in greater length on a linked webpage.” A couple of more library examples can be found at: Twitter Update or how I was able to exploit the latest social networking site without really trying and Twitter and the Missouri River Regional Library.
AND FINALLY the Twitteracy Project: recommended reading is Damian Bariexca’s blog post, The Twitteracy Project is Dead, Long Live the Twitteracy Project, which presents a very honest case study on his use of Twitter. It seems that despite the benefits on offer there are two major challenges: one, the technology and two, student intrinsic motivation.
You can follow me at Twitter by going here and look for “drandyoliver”.
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