Blogging & Twittering

ETPT 5/7550 Using the Internet in the Classroom

Collaborative environments provide opportunities teachers and students a high quality teaching-learning environment.  One of them is blogging.

The authors in the 2009 Horizon Report say ”Many teachers recognize the importance of collaborative work and are finding that online tools to support it provide them and their students with opportunities to work creatively, develop teamwork skills, and tap into the perspectives of people around the world with a wide range of experiences and skills that differ from their own.” (Levine, Smith, and Smythe, 2009, p.6, para.1).

 Blogging is not only a way for communication with students’ friends and family, but also very useful tool in classroom because as in the 2011 Horizon Report  authors say “ Many activities related to learning and education take place outside the walls of the classroom and thus are not part of our learning metrics.”  (Johnson, Adams, and Haywood, 2011, p.6, para.1). Blogging remove all limits to get together with others, regardless considering distances. Thanks to blogging, students disscuss by posting their thoughts in digital environment. Therefore, it is also very useful for shy students.  

Twittering is also one of those collaborative environments providing a high quality teaching-learning environment. Even though it is almost same with Facebook, it is more than facebook. It is called as microblogging application. We can send and receive messages via computer, phone or text messaging on twitter. We can follow and be followed there. Twitter has Hastags. According to hashtags.org, “The primary purpose of a hashtag is to bring conversations on the same topic into a single thread to make it convenient for information consumers to view and compare ideas.” (“None to Claim Their Bones,” 2012). Thanks to Hashtags, we can connect with people passionate about a specific topic. Hashtags are able to be used not only in Twitter, but also in Google+, identi.ca and Instagram. HashTags are very efficient tool. In the article from the website named hashtags.org, author says “In a way, an effective hashtag creates a community online.” (“None to Claim Their Bones,” 2012) Therefore, twitter is a very useful tool for education, too. From the video named Tweets for Education Pt1 in the PB works page of our class, it is explained that how Twitter is being used in education. The video gives some real world examples for that. We can share an article or a movie how we were impacted from them. According to this video, there are 6 million unique users since January 2009. Just 1% of these users are 17 years old or under 17 years old. This video gives some reasons why educators should use twitter in the classroom. They are to engage students with technology, to respond to students’ questions, utilize mobile technologies, and to metacognition. Metacognition leads to students understand what they learned outside of the classroom. To give more specific examples and uses on twitter for education, we can look at the second vide named Tweets for Education Pt21 in the PB works page of our class. According to this video, thanks to being on twitter, we can get latest news, useful information, gain insight and perspectives. It is also can be used as a discussion tool in the classroom. In this way, the discussion will conversational. Moreover, students might focus on what you want teacher say on this discussion through twitter. Lastly, it is very good toll for discussion to especially shy students. Thanks to being on twitter, they can have an easier time posting their thoughts. To give another example of efficiency use of twitter in the classroom is in writing assignments. Twitter provides to think deeply, to keep the story focused, and to get contribution from other people.

David Warlick is the network I am going to follow on Twitter. I chose that because he is one of the most influential people in the field of educational technology, having served as a classroom teacher, a district administrator, and a staff consultant over a 35-year career.

Warlick has written such books about instructional technology and today’s literacy as Redefining Literacy, A Gardener’s Approach to Learning, Classroom Blogging, and Raw Materials for the Mind.  I read his all books. He has a blog named Class Blogmeister. In describing Class Blogmeister, Warlick said: “Perhaps one of the most fascinating tools that have emerged from the Internet cloud in recent years is the blog … an online publishing tool that enables people to easily publish their loves, passions, dislikes, peeves, discoveries, and insights.  Thousands of teachers have discovered the value of classroom blogging, both as an avenue for their communications, but also as a tool for giving voice to what their students are learning and how they are learning” (Class Blogmeister, 2012).

He adds that BlogMeister “is explicitly designed with teachers and students in mind, where the teacher can evaluate, comment on, and finally publish students' blog articles in a controlled environment.  Give it a try and let me know what you think” (“None to Claim Their Bones,” 2005).

References

Classroom Blogmeister. (2012). Retrieved from http://classblogmeister.com/

Johnson, L., Adams, S., and Haywood, K. (2011). The NMC horizon report: 2001 K12 edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved from

http://utetpt5550.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/49357920/2011-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf 

Levine, A., Smith, R., and Smythe, T. (2009). The 2009 horizon report: K12 edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved from 

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2009-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf           

“None to Claim Their Bones,” (2012). Retrieved from 

http://www.hashtags.org/platforms/twitter/why-use-hashtags-guide-to-the-micro-blogging-universe/

ETPT 5/7550 Using the Internet in the Classroom