Twitter Activity

When I was thinking about an activity idea that includes learner use of Twitter, I was thinking about my students, who were college level students. I built this activity to help my students to learn how Twitter is a powerful learning tool where all learn from each other. 

 Twitter activity:

Overview:

Social media such as blogs/microblogs, steaming video and social networks can play a great role in giving voice to voiceless individuals. In this activity you will investigate “How did social media help Egyptian protestors in January 25, 2011 revolution?” In doing so, you will    

·         Collaborate to answer the previous question.

·         Use Twitter to share information and links to other resources you read about the Egyptian protestors and social media.

·         Become familiar with Twitter.

·         Learn from each other.

Instructions:

·         You should read How Twittering Creates a Social Sixth Sense Clive Thompson, from Wired and Friends Swap Twitters and Frustration&Wall Street Journal. These are both short and should only take you 15 minutes to read.

·         Create a Twitter account.

·         Follow 5 classmates to get the Twitter experience, you can find them in my Twitter profile.

·         Create a group  

·         Create a Group Name such as #lion

·         As a group, do search with Google or any search engine to find how social media such as twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flicker helped Egyptian protestors in their revolution in January 25, 2011.

·         As a group, identify the best 5 links or articles about Egyptian revolution and social media role.

·         Tweet what you come about, your progress, difficulties as you work through this activity.

·         Use @mariammatta to take my attention.

·         Post (tweet) at least 5 times over the weekend.  

Assessment:

The assignment is worth only 10% of the final grad.

Twitter and Higher Education

Twitter is my favorite microblogging ever. I really learned a lot from following those knowledgeable people in Twitter. But, I was wondering how to use Twitter in the classroom, especially the higher education classroom, where I work. I found great ideas about how educators can use twitter in education., and I want to share some of them with you.

·         Instant Feedback: Students can use Twitter to get instant responses when doing their classwork, trying to understand the material. Tweet: “I don’t understand what this reading has to do with New Media? Any ideas?” Other students then respond (Dave, 2008).

·         Writing Assignments: Remember that game you used to play where one person would start a story, the next person would continue it, etc. . .Okay try this on Twitter (Dave, 2008).

·         Students, in groups, can work on a complicated problem (such as a math problem). They tweet their progress and difficulties as they work through it. They learn from each other and the teacher gets some powerful insight into their thought processes. This allows for very focused and concrete feedback to students to refine their thinking and improve their skills(Kuropatwa, 2007).

·         While a teacher gives a lecture, students tweet their thoughts about it to each other. They can also tweet any confusions they have as they arise. This makes the lecture much more dynamic as it takes on the character of a conversation. The teacher isn't "interrupted" so they can develop new concepts fully but they can also respond instantaneously to student's learning needs. This also provides a live, in class venue where quieter students can be heard and get their questions answered immediately. The open nature of this discourse also allows the teacher to modify their presentation on the fly to address the needs of the learners in the room (Kuropatwa, 2007).

·         Students can set up a learning network that is made up of anyone from classmates to others around the world to work on content. Also, you can use Twitter to help your students gather data (Solomon & Schrum, 2010).

Dave. (2008). Twitter for academia. http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/

Kuropatwa, D. (2007). Twitter: Ephemeral learning tool. http://adifference.blogspot.com/2007/07/twitter-ephemeral-learning-tool.html

Solomon, G. & Schrum, L. (2010). Web 2.0: How-to for educators. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.