There is a quiet revolution occuring in classrooms around the world... and it is only 140-characters long.

#Background

Twitter, not-so-long ago used primarily by journalists, reality TV stars, and other miscellaneous celebrities has taken to the main stream. Students, teachers, principals and even the producers of supplementary educational materials and experiences for high school students are tweeting away in cyberspace, and following the tweets (called a feed) of others. This new form of communication is occasionally referenced as “microblogging”, and is an increasing format of communication in an increasingly technology-based society. (Rogers-Estable, 2009, p. 55)

What is a tweet? A 140-character post to a website sent by a cellular phone, a smart phone, or through the plain old internet. Topics range from what someone ate for lunch, the recent unrest in Egypt or even a link to a thought-provoking article. What all of these have in common is that even the most mundane tweet can come from a very exotic locale (or even at the desk beside you) and has the possibility to share a wealth of knowledge.

This user-generated content is often shared by others after its initial posting – a process called re-tweeting – and thus the extrinsic motivation to post something appears. Not all tweets are useful (thanks Justin Beiber for telling me you ate a sandwich), but many are fantastic sources of information and are sometimes have similar themes, a process called “trending” by including a hashtag (#) in front of a word or phrase.

There are #drawbacks… but the #positives > #negatives

Obviously, the limits that 140 characters impose are great. Students tweeting to others have to be cognizant of the length of their post, including any hashtags or links to other sites. “U rly have 2 b gr8 @” (you really have to be great at) deciphering the many pieces of shorthand which are creeping through posts. Davies and Merchant do go so far as suggesting that despite concerns about the pervasive shorthand containing a mixture of numbers, letters and symbols, literacy may be on the rise as more and more youth and young adults engage in generating written content for internet posts such as tweets (Davies & Merchant, 2009, p. 15).

Privacy is still an issue since students are apt to fill in all their personal details to a profile and then in the excitement of being followed by a crowd, might forget to set that personal information to be private. Many school divisions block access to social networking sites such as Twitter – which in itself is a major drawback as many proponents of technology in the classroom believe that educating young people in safe internet usage is much more effective when done in a practical setting with guidance and limited controls (Davies & Merchant, 2009, p. 112).

The experience which Twitter provides is invaluable and unheard of prior to this generation. Students know their work will be seen by someone; entire classes can have a solitary feed to share their work with the world (or just interested parents), and in some lucky cases, students are able to converse via tweeting, re-tweeting and replies to their posts with people who otherwise would have been unreachable. Talk about extrinsic motivation, that is nearly as good as fan mail from Green Day!

Example: CTV News anchor Susan Tymofichuk and Canada’s History Society program manager Joel Ralph reach out to a Winnipeg social studies classroom who used Twitter:

Long gone are the days of pen-pals in Australia, writing to news anchor Kevin Newman and hoping not to get a generic response back from Global National, or having students cram around the computer monitor to see a link found on a website. Now, Down Under is just a click away, Kevin might just re-tweet something a student has written themselves, and links can be accessed from any personal computer with an internet connection.

Edu-babble is hard to fit in a tweet: how educators can use Twitter

Many parents ask their student “what did you learn in school today?” and frequently receive “nothing” as their answer. Twitter is an idea worth trying if you want to keep in touch with your child’s daily progress without becoming your child’s teacher’s best friend. Just as some teachers are using websites to post homework, some can use Twitter for quick-and-easy updates without the time-consuming need for website editing.

Furthermore, you can keep up with your school administrator’s progress in much the same way, if they embrace Twitter. School administrators are finally realizing the benefits to regularly posted concise tweeting. Increased confidence, increased awareness of issues and developments, and even increased organization are advanced by tweets (Hughes, 2010, p. 8). Parents can access the information from their handheld devices or computers to keep tabs on what their educators are doing to better their child’s education, and do not have to

Even teachers are finding their voices as a result of Twitter. Just as our students have multiple intelligences and express themselves in different ways, so do the adults who educate them. In some cases, staff members are finding it easier to be more vocal through the use of Twitter. While their name is attached to the post, some still find a small amount of comfort in knowing what they say is not face-to-face with their peers or principals (Demski, 2010, p. 16).

It takes a teacher to educate a child, but the village needs to know what is going on (and other people might want to comment on it).

In general, accountability and connectivity are increased through the use of social networking sites such as Twitter. Real-time updates keep parents in the loop of what their children are doing. Children are accountable for getting it done since there is a constant reminder hanging over their heads each time they log into their computer. Teachers are accountable since the parents now have access to the information to help them ensure their student is exposed to both planned and null curriculum. The administrators are accountable to anyone who pays taxes and wants to know that professional development is happening all the way up to the top.

References

Davies, J.  & Merchant, G. (2009). Web 2.0 for schools: Learning and social participation. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

Demski, J. (2010). Tweets for teachers: how Twitter can expand educators’ horizons and bring them important professional benefits, 140 characters at a time. T H E Journal, 37, 16.

Hughes, B. (2010). Twittering in the hands of school leaders. School Administrator, 67, 8.Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Pritchard, A. (2007). Effective teaching with internet technologies. London, UK: Paul Chapman Publishing.

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms.

Rogers-Estable, M. (2009). Web 2.0 and distance education: tools and techniques. Distance Learning, 6, 55.

Solomon, G. & Schrum, L. (2007). Web 2.0 new tools, new schools. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

Somekh, B. (2007). Pedagogy and learning with ICT: researching the art of innovation. New York, NY: Routledge.