task #3 tweeducation?

The task is the same like the last one, because most seminar-attendents haven´t done it so far. So I searched for more sources of how microblogging can be used in school/education to support learning.

I found a paper with the topic: “Microblogging In Technology Enhanced Learning: A Use-Case Inspection of PPE Summer School 2008” by Cristina Costa, Guenter Beham, Wolfgang Reinhardt and Martin Sillaots.

The paper is about the experiences of a group of summer school attendants who used twitter. Most of them haven´t known or used twitter before. Beside this they wanted analyzing  the impact it had on this given context according to the users’ own views and post-reflection.

They analysed all tweets of the attendants and conducted a survey asking for feedback from all to get a clearer understanding how microblogging was used. Comparing all tweet clouds during the first two days Twitter was mainly used to exchange only messages without links to other resources. The next day  the attendees shared a lot of links related to lectures and workshops via Twitter.  Although the majority of answers received inform them that, in general, microblogging was well accepted and regarded as an interesting approach, most individuals also pointed some negative aspects to it. The limited length of the messages was one of the main points of criticism, only preceded by Twitter’s design structure, which seemed to displease many of the summer schoolers. In their own words, it was quite limitative.

Nevertheless, in the author´s opinion, such approach doesn’t seem to comply with everyone’s learning styles. This
leaves them to conclude microblogging can be used as an interesting discussion and sharing back-channel in learning events.

My ideas to this article in connection to education:

This article is not exactly about the relation to education, in particular not at school. But it descripes the first steps with twitter of students and their experiences with it.  Some of them pointed out that 140 signs are too less for messaging. I agree, because for explaining something its really too less. But for the general use of twitter (the question: what are you doing?) it will be enough.

Besides the authors describe that it doesn’t seem to comply with everyone’s learning styles. This is an important hint, also for using at schools. In my opinion you can´t forcing pupils into using twitter. By the way I am also not very convinced by it.

Another reason is, students at school who should use twitter for learning need the possibility of using a computer whenever they need it. Not every familiy has an internet-flatrate yet. Beside this it´s necessary that teacher has the know-how to handle this whole microblogging-system. And maybe it can help making children addicted to the internet.