This week we talked about using social networking tools in the classroom. I have to be honest, I initially thought that using twitter int he classroom would be a great idea. Now, I am no so sure. I still believe that the more teachers who use twitter, the better behaved students will be when working with these types of tools. But, I have seen students create dummy accounts so that they can anonymously post anything they think, without consequence or fer of repercussion.
We read a couple of good articles outlining how to use twitter in the classroom. I really like the article outlining 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom. So of these ideas have real potential and left a lot of room for personal adaptation.
We also watched a video called The Twitter Experiment about a college class at UT Dallas that used twitter to help students share ideas and have discussion that they wouldn't be able to have in the limited time allowed during a traditional class. I really like this idea. However, in the video, several of the student twitter usernames where shown. I looked up all of the accounts that I could read clearly from the video and found that not one of the accounts is still being used. They have all either been deleted or their last tweet for for this class (which ended in May of 2009.) If we are teaching with these tools because they are "native" to these students, then why would ALL of these accounts be inactive or deleted?
We worked in a TwHistory project to reenact some of the events of the Pearl Harbor. We worked in teams to create a list of tweets that were scheduled to be posted from their twitter accounts on Sunday morning. I thought this was a great experiment and commend the instructors for taking on such a difficult task. I enjoyed watching the tweets as they were posted on Sunday. It was great to see all of the different perspectives and voices give accounts of the events of Pearl Harbor. I don't think I'll ever do a project like this, or encourage other teachers to do this on this scale, but I think there are variations of this project that would be great to work on with teachers and students.
We ended class with a review of Wikipedia and how it can be used in class. I like Wikipedia, I use it all the time and I don't mind it when students use it as a reference for some of their work in my class. But I do think a distinction needs to be made between just looking something up and doing academic research. Academic research requires deeper sources and learning how to use the databases where primary documents can be located. Wikipedia's list of references are a great place to start, but they are almost always internet references whose credibility isn't always confirmed. The bottom line is that Wikipedia is a great reference for a wide variety of subjects. But students need to learn how to do research beyond Wikipedia.
We read a couple of good articles outlining how to use twitter in the classroom. I really like the article outlining 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom. So of these ideas have real potential and left a lot of room for personal adaptation.
We also watched a video called The Twitter Experiment about a college class at UT Dallas that used twitter to help students share ideas and have discussion that they wouldn't be able to have in the limited time allowed during a traditional class. I really like this idea. However, in the video, several of the student twitter usernames where shown. I looked up all of the accounts that I could read clearly from the video and found that not one of the accounts is still being used. They have all either been deleted or their last tweet for for this class (which ended in May of 2009.) If we are teaching with these tools because they are "native" to these students, then why would ALL of these accounts be inactive or deleted?
We worked in a TwHistory project to reenact some of the events of the Pearl Harbor. We worked in teams to create a list of tweets that were scheduled to be posted from their twitter accounts on Sunday morning. I thought this was a great experiment and commend the instructors for taking on such a difficult task. I enjoyed watching the tweets as they were posted on Sunday. It was great to see all of the different perspectives and voices give accounts of the events of Pearl Harbor. I don't think I'll ever do a project like this, or encourage other teachers to do this on this scale, but I think there are variations of this project that would be great to work on with teachers and students.
We ended class with a review of Wikipedia and how it can be used in class. I like Wikipedia, I use it all the time and I don't mind it when students use it as a reference for some of their work in my class. But I do think a distinction needs to be made between just looking something up and doing academic research. Academic research requires deeper sources and learning how to use the databases where primary documents can be located. Wikipedia's list of references are a great place to start, but they are almost always internet references whose credibility isn't always confirmed. The bottom line is that Wikipedia is a great reference for a wide variety of subjects. But students need to learn how to do research beyond Wikipedia.