Comments on: Micro-Blogging Part Deux

By: Jeffrey Keefer

Jeffrey Keefer — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:07:35 +0000

These are some great suggestions. I am teaching a new class in an adult certificate program, and just blogged about looking for this very topic http://silenceandvoice.com/archives/2008/03/31/how-to-use-twitter-in-higher-education/

I am not sure exactly how this will work, but am also interested in doing some research on the topic if anybody is up for it. I will use it over the next six weeks (how long my class is) and then assess what I learned to improve / adjust for the next go-around.

By: Melanie McBride

Melanie McBride — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:18:11 +0000

Thanks for including my post in your list above. It’s all very new and weird for all of us – educators and students, all of us.

I really like what you said in the video and here:

“But in this moment at least I think that is becoming less and less the case, students attend college where their identity as a student is just part of what they do and who they are. Many of them have jobs, commute to school, etc., and thus the social aspect of the campus life has changed. If this is the case than these “new” ways of socializing such as Facebook and MySpace are where students are forming their learning communities, ones which do not entirely, perhaps only minimally, overlap with their classroom experience. Thus to extend the walls of the classroom, make education relevant to all aspects of students lives rather than just what they do four-five hours a day we need to think of ways to extend the ways we form and foster learning communities.”

There’s no question that we need boundaries and limits in contexts of power and assessment, but we also need to think about identity and professionalism a little more humanely than we have in the past. I see a strong holistic connection with what you’re saying in relation to Steiner, Freire and other philosophies of teaching the “whole” learner – head, heart and hands. There has never been a better time for this than now.

By: Alexandre Enkerli

Alexandre Enkerli — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:30:41 +0000

@academicdave Thankfully, issues surrounding “walls” in educational institutions seem to be well-understood from your coverage. One thing which makes ed. tech. so useful, IMHO, is the occasion to discuss broader issues.
In this case, my practice of “onlne openness” is rather similar to yours in the sense that I tend to take walls down as much as possible. There might be a generational factor, here. (I’m a 35yo PhD candidate.) It’s quite possible that, ten years from now, “wall-less” learning may become mainstream.
In the meantime, there’s something to be said about creating different environments for different learning/teaching situations. In some cases, a kind of “walled garden” may generate a sense of intimacy necessary for some scholarly discussions. In other contexts, complete openness can in fact bring academia out of the Ivory Tower. In a way, twittering can serve as practice for “privacy control.”
OTOH, it sure would be useful if there could be Ning-like special uses for Twitter (e.g., course by course). Or if tweets are mashed up with some Learning Management System like Moodle.

By: iVenus

iVenus — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:19:15 +0000

Thanks for including my blog to all these other invaluable links. I look forward to the next entry “nuts & bolts”.

I completely agree with you about “Twitter helps us to expand the walls of the institution”. Yes, it does seem to others that painting the classroom experience with this Twitter-brush is a great overgeneralization but let me give you an example as to how the walls have come down in my classroom experiments.

I teach Mondays and Wednesdays and after my many students have tweeted in the target language over the weekend, Mondays’ classes no longer start with the information getting question “what did you do on the weekend?” but rather, “oh, so you went to the MoMA on Friday. What exhibits did you see? Did you like it? What was your favorite piece?” And since I teach in an e-class, I can pull up images and information to share with other students who don’t know the details. Sometimes, the others are engaged in this student-driven conversation, sometimes they aren’t. But the level and content of these warm-up questions are richer, because they use Twitter.

I too, like you, profess that Twitter is not the next killer web app, but it has opened new windows (in buildings were sometimes opening a window is not possible) and the little bird has come in and made it easier for many students to fly.