This presentation outlines the possibilities that Twitter presents to educators

1. My Quest to Find the
Magic Leads to Twitter
by Helen Crump
MA Technology , Learning,
Innovation & Change
December 2010

2. the times they are a changin’
the way people
obtain and exchange
information is becoming more…
digital
social
mobile

3. web 2.0: connected ‘digital natives’
instant messaging
texting
photos downloads
blogs &
micro
videos social networks blogs

4. definitions
social network
is a web-based
service that provides micro blog
ways for users to short posts to a personal
interact to build blog [web diary],
communities of especially about
people who have happenings of the
common interests moment

5. “suddenly everyone's talking
about Twitter! ”
• part microblogging tool
• part social networking tool
• freely accessible on the Web and
mobile devices
• currently has 175 million users
• 360,000 sign ups per day
• 16% of new users join via mobile device

6. appeals to our inherently inquisitive
human nature
allows you to answer the question
"What are you doing?"
• by sending short text messages
140 characters in length
• called "tweets"
• to your friends, or "followers."
it is proving to be an ideal platform for
rapid, innovative and consumable
communication

7. can appear frivolous to people
who have never tried it
• social nature and mobility has led
Twitter to become very popular quite
quickly
• time-poor or remote users have
opportunity for informal conversation
with those outside their daily activities
• great tool for monitoring and keeping a
pulse on topics and people
is Twitter a distraction
conversation: ‘virtual water-cooler’ from “real work” ?

8. links to communities of practice

9. 0penness, simplicity and
flexibility
short format of the tweet
is defining characteristic…
• opens up your circle of contacts to an ever-
growing community of like-minded people
• less gated method of communication: you can
follow and share information with people that
you wouldn't normally exchange email or IM
messages with
• allows informal collaboration and quick
information sharing

10. discover what’s new in your
world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NshQFrpC2O4&feature=
player_embedded#

11. can enhance practice in Higher
Education
Centre for Learning
& Performance Technologies’
“Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010”
number 1
Twitter
http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100-2010.html

12. can be beneficial to working
practice
Twitter helps develop community
of practice and professional identity
research:
• keep in touch with research network
• engage in debate
• link to blog posts or journal articles
you’re reading
• ‘amplify’ conference and event
happenings to non-attending colleagues

13. can be beneficial to teaching and
learning
out-of-class:
• promotes discussion beyond classroom walls
• can pose questions or answer queries about assignments
• creates ‘community of support’ beyond physical classroom
• facilitates collaborative group work
• update students about lecture cancellations and venue changes
in-class:
• in large lecture hall can engage all
students in discussions
• ‘back-channel’ real time commenting,
recording, divergent point of view

14. the Twitter experiment at UT
Dallas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPVWDkF7U8

15. Community of Inquiry:
Twitter pedagogy
 teacher presence: engagement
through Twitter helps attend to
instructional management issues
and students’ knowledge building
 cognitive presence: students able
to construct meaning through
sustained interaction with tutor
and professional practitioners
 social presence: “It really made
me feel like we knew each other
more and were actually in class Dunlap, J.C., and Lowenthal, P.R. (2009).
Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to
together.” Enhance Social Presence. Journal of Information
Systems Education, 20 (2).

16. the college: considerations
before adopting Twitter
benefits:
• free to set up an account
• helps facilitate blended learning offer
• facilitates social learning
• compliments existing channels of communication
to discuss:
• open communication tool - need to aware of
‘reputation management’ issues
• IP - ownership of content needs to be clarified
• familiarisation phase - for both organisation and
individual (cost)
other: campus-wide wi-fi would be advantageous

17. the lecturer: considerations
before implementing Twitter
equitability:
• can all students access mobile phone/ laptop [alternative?]
course management:
• compulsory or optional
• will Twitter participation be assessed or not
• is there mobile phone/ wi-fi signal in classroom [if needed]
• plan how to track tweets - set up course hash tag
professional:
• consider how much personal information you
want to disclose [maybe 2 accounts]

18. students: considerations before
you start to Tweet for class
benefits:
• increases social interaction with peers
• provides learning support
• helps facilitate collaboration
cautions:
• be aware content is moderated by lecturer
• in-class tweets are labelled "anonymous" in the
view that students see but student can still be
identified by lecturer
• open communication tool - do not compromise
fledgling professional identity

19. ‘we can work it out’
• as the ranks of educators on Twitter
grow, we hear more and more about the
importance of their Personal Learning
Network [PLN] so why shouldn’t our
students have PLNs of their own?
• in order to motivate and relate to their
students, lecturers need to be able to
speak the same language and inhabit the
same communities, both real and virtual;
engage with technology and truly enhance
teaching and learning

20. The Twitter Song

21. thank you:
happy tweeting ***
you can follow me on Twitter
@crumphelen