Twitter and Education

There are two questions relating to Twitter and education:
1. Should we teach students how to use Twitter?
2. Can Twitter be used in education?
Here I want to concentrate on the second, largely based on University level education in my own area of Computing.

Twitter is a micro-blogging site in which users can post messages of up to 140 characters, this character limit means that it would be difficult to deliver the equivalent to the traditional lecturer. It is hard to imagine explaining the syntax and semantics of a statement in a programming language in 140 characters. However I have seen and heard of Twitter having a use in a less formal context and these are things that seem to work in educational settings:

+ Back channel. Setting up a hash tag that matches a module/course code (for example we use #CS2TX6 for our Business Programming) gives students and staff a chance to share opinions, questions, responses via tweets. Getting a hash tag that doesn't clash with other institutions would be more problematic if modules/courses use common codes like C101 – in which case it would need to be combined with something identifying the institution.

+ Feeds. We feed tweets from willing people into our school's social media site (RedGloo) this allows anyone to get a flavour of what goes on in Twitter. We use the tag #norg (no RedGloo) which stops a tweet appearing, so that tweeeters can control what is seen.

+ Lists. Lists are a great way of bringing together people with shared interests, so a list of all known twitters in a university can help in introductions, we have a list of University of Reading people. Lists can also help in creating links between students and graduates/potential employers.

+ Mentions. Seeing who people you respect follow, mention, recommend is a way many twitters build their networks and it certainly works in educational settings. I've often noticed that people within a circle start following someone who is mentioned in a relevant tweet.

The number of people who actively tweet in an academic community is small, less than 10% in my school. But those who do have seen benefits, which include:
+ answers to quick questions
+ help with bigger problems
+ bringing students to the attention of employers
+ brokering sub-projects
+ getting students involved with research projects

And one student told me the other day Twitter had saved her degree.

So while twittering isn't for everyone, if you are part of a real academic community but feel you aren't getting enough out of it you may find that there are other people tweeting about things that interest you near you.

The World is Open

I am currently reading Curtis Bonk's "The World is Open – How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education" I'm in to the second chapter and while I agree with a lot of what things a few things are annoying me, and I thought I would share them now.

Curtis Bonk's style of writing I very annoying, he is trying to write in a personal voice which certainly can help make dry text much easier to read. However I am getting annoyed by the constant mention of his "friends", even when these are esteemed academics, ormaybe because they are. The fact that he and his friends went jogging while attending EdMedia 2004 does not add anything to his presentation, nor does the need to wear a rain poncho in Illinois in the same year.

Like many Americans he assumes his readers are Americans with ready familiarity with American systems and little knowledge beyond.

Finally so far he is painting a very rosy picture of using the web for learning, and he hasn't touched on any of the frustrations, for example Managed Learning Environments that do not work with common browsers, animations tied to proprietary software etc.

Anyway I still am reading and Curtis Bonk is saying interesting things, so I will read on.

The technologist and the educationalist

Lindsay Jordan has written a post "The educationalist and the technologist" in which she describes the problems of an educationalist working in a technology environment. The fact that there is a gap in the understanding of the terms that are used by technologists and educationalists. Coupled with the fact that many none technologists seem too willing to say "oh, I don’t understand computers".

My background is the reverse of Lindsay I am a technologist coming into the world of education. I have made some mistakes in the use of terms that I haveinterpreted one way while the non-technologists interpreted another, notably if you are a technologist a "tool" is something solid (like a piece of software) while some people think it is a set of directions written on paper.

We need to work together to bring these two communities together, taking care to explain the terms we use and to make realising what is needed technically accessible to  those coming fromeducational background. I'm wondering the best way to do this? Would a job swap work? Or should we have a get together that shares experiences? Or what?

Fun with Physics

Below is a copy of a notice from barry Spencer at Bromley. It will be of interest to anyone looking at educational uses of virtual worlds,I'll try and visit soon and blog about my visit.

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As part of the Developing Computer Games module for my level 3 students, and following the success of their Second Life Wind Turbine project, I decided once again to make use of the virtual world in the development of a quiz style shoot-em up scenario. While students had carried out some work with Linden Script during the first project, I felt they would appreciate a refresher and a little more depth in their knowledge, and so a few weeks ago I started to produce a series of short tutorials, which are free to access at the main hall on Shimmer Island. It was as I was producing the last in the current series, which looks at some basic physics functions, I realised in order demonstrate how objects behave when they become physical with regard to factors such as material type and applied forces, including the wind, it would be of some value to include a few actual simulations. The outcome is the ‘Fun with Physics’ skybox. I have included the slurl below, so please free to drop over any time and have some fun with physics. The project is I suspect going to be very much a work in progress, and hopefully will include some input from the group

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Star%20Beach%20Island/193/22

Mini Postgraduate Certificate day 2

Well overnight I decide it was definitely worth going back, and today was much better.

I was quite surprised that everyone else also turned up, although two of then sloped off early. Maybe the promise of the "mini certificate" helped.

 

The session started with a review, but then moved on to something more concrete. I like examples and work best when I am given them, ones I particularly liked:

 

* Get a class to compare mobile phones, this can then be used as an example of arguments based on evidence rather than just facts

* Allowing attendees at a lecture to have an index card on which they can make notes, these sets of notes are the collected in, but given out when there is an exam or an in-house test.  Although I can see difficulties with managing this it has a definite appeal and I may adapt for future use.

 

We once again pondered success and what students expect from university.

 

The workshop leader towards the end shared a secret, which explained why he was happy to sit quietly after he had asked a question, even though we were not volunteering opinions. I expect he had a similar secret that explained the monotone voice, I complained about yesterday. I'm not comfortable with such approaches, I appreciate that when you ask a question that sometimes people need time to respond, but I do not think you should always be waiting 20 seconds, whatever the circumstances! And I cannot think a monotone voice serves any real purpose (other than irritation)

 

All in all I didn't learn a lot, but maybe if I had the University would rightly want their Teaching Fellowship back. But there were snippets that were very useful, and participating in the workshop was very valuable, I got a lot of opinions that otherwise I would never be exposed to.

 

I also got 4 people to fill in a Learning Landscape questionnaire, 1 of the others had previously completed it, I'm not sure why the other 8 (or so) didn't – it wasn't very long.

Mini Postgraduate Certificate in Learning, Teaching and Assessment for Experienced Staff

I'm taking a CSTD course entitled: "Mini Postgraduate Certificate in Learning, Teaching and Assessment for Experienced Staff" it promised:

"This two day workshop is aimed at experienced academic staff who would like a thorough grounding in the principles and practices contained in most Post Graduate Certificate HEA accredited modules without having to attend and pass a two year programme."

After the first day I am not sure it is going to meet that promise.

 

We started off by setting out what we were interested in, perhaps at that point I should have raised the issue of meeting what was put in the advertising blurb, but I rather took that as a given.

 

Anyway it started as a discussion that engaged us in considering what our expectations of students were. We were also asked to consider what students expected, however our views were not directly sought. Instead we spent time from coffee until after lunch following a somewhat circular path about someone's research that showed most students expected to come to university to learn, and when pushed further to "learn knowledge" and that they thought knowledge was facts, that where either right or wrong. While the minority of students realise that knowledge is more related to arguments. I reached a point where this was really irritating me, the workshop leader was adopting a monotone voice and asking participants for their opinions. So I suggested that we were cycling round and that we would be better talking about solutions, rather than the problems.

Things did then pick up and we looked at research on attention and receptiveness, and ways in which drops in attention can be overcome.

We then moved on to a session on what we wanted to see in an ideal graduate of our degrees, this was easy, because I know a number of these.

We finished with the "did you know?" video  (most recent version at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U) – which I really like and I wondered whether we should have had that earlier (say before lunch).

 

Will I go back tomorrow? I think so – there were good points, and if my attention wanders I'll know that not all the techniques the workshop leader suggest really work!