Professional and Personal Uses of Twitter
Nils McGee
Central Connecticut State University
After reading Chapter 13 of e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, reading the papers on Twitter, and briefly using twitter for the first time, I can see some implications for the use of twitter in my classroom and for professional activities that support classroom instruction. Twitter would not be appropriate for students to use individually in a high school classroom due to student lack of expertise with Twitter, low students calibration accuracy, and the need to maintain the privacy of student information when using the internet pursuant to Board of Education policies. Twitter can also be used for professional activities that support classroom instruction.
The students in my classes are freshmen and sophomores in high school biology. Twitter could be used to follow professionals in the subject throughout the school year. Students could try to search for professionals in specialty areas of biology they are interested in, follow them, and ultimately try to communicate with them. The students lack expertise in the use of Twitter, and with the subject matter. In informal polls of my class, only three students out of sixty had ever used Twitter. Twitter is an environment with complete learner control. Success is more likely when “learners have prior knowledge of the content and skills involved in the training.” (Clark & Mayer, 2008) Since the students have neither prior knowledge nor skills necessary, the only way that Twitter could be used – at least initially – would be through a class Twitter account. This would give me some degree of program control.
Having a class Twitter account would give me a degree of program control. Choices about topics of interest, and selection of experts to follow could be discussed and controlled. Students would have a choice, but the choices would be directed by the teacher.
The most important aspect about the use of Twitter is the need to not violate board policy. The school board policy regarding the acceptable use of technology includes “Identification of student work to be published will be limited to first name and grade level. Photographs and videos of students will not identify students by name or teacher.” (Regional School District #15 Board of Education, 2001) By its nature, if students had their own Twitter account, I would be unable to control their use to ensure compliance with Board policy.
As a professional, Twitter could be used to develop a social network for the development of a professional learning community (PLC). Users of Twitter “participate in communities which share similar interests.” (Java, Finin, Song, & Tseng, 2007) Professional learning communities in education enhance teacher directed sharing and learning of information between colleagues. Twitter could be used to expand the pool of professionals that could be used for collaboration within a PLC.
On both a professional and personal level, Twitter can be used to receive information about products used at home and in the classroom. According to Michelle Gershberg, many companies are using Twitter to rapidly communicate information about products in order to develop or regain the confidence of the consumer. (2010)
Bibliography
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). e-Learning and the Science of Instruction (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Gershberg, M. (2010, June 23). Consumers say: "In tweets we trust". (P. Berlowitz, Ed.) Retrieved June 23, 2010, from Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100623/wr_nm/us_retail_summit_tweets
Java, A., Finin, T., Song, X., & Tseng, B. (2007). Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities. Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop '07. San Jose: ACM.
Regional School District #15 Board of Education. (2001, January 22). The Instructional Use of Technology Resources. Middlebury, CT, USA.
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Trying to Use Twitter
Nils McGee
Central Connecticut State University
Akshay Java, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin, and Belle Tseng presented four major uses for Twitter, and three major types of users. The four major uses are; (1) daily chatter, (2) conversations, (3) sharing information/URLs, and (4) reporting news. The three major user types are; (1) information source, (2) friends, and (3) information seeker. (Java, Finin, Song, & Tseng, 2007) This week I am trying to use twitter for each of the four uses listed, and trying to take on each of the three roles.
Daily chatter encompasses the majority of the tweets. A tweet in response to a personal correspondent can signify their importance to you.
Conversations are confusing. Finding the thread of a conversation amid the various tweets is difficult at best. I know that the @username is supposed to signify a response, but to which tweet? Are there twitter clients that link replies? It doesn’t look like it can do that.
I shared a couple of URLs this week. This use of Twitter is great. Instead of an e-mail, the tweets can be easily used to communicate links to websites. We all stumble upon these every day, but how often do we communicate our findings to others?
I have not reported any news via Twitter. I have followed other tweets that contain news items. When does news become chatter? I find that most of the news items are already so well reported that they are not really news.
Of the three roles that are listed, I generally fit the role of an information seeker. This is primarily because of the novelty of Twitter to me. As I find out its capabilities and protocols (and develop a network) I should start assuming the other roles as well. I am trying to be an information source by posting the address to my class Moodle website. For some people, this can be a great way to share expertise. For example – I could post that I figured out how to post my office hour calendar along with a Google doc form that allows students to sign up for appointments. Other people using Moodle might want to learn how. None of my friends, relatives, or colleagues are on Twitter, so acting as a friend is not possible at the moment.
Works Cited
Java, A., Finin, T., Song, X., & Tseng, B. (2007, August 12). Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities. Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop '07. San Jose: ACM.
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Virtual Field Trips
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Outdoor Activities
Letter to an Author
I am a graduate student at Central Connecticut State University, working on a Masters in Educational Technology. I have read several works written or co-written by you, including your Clickers in college classrooms paper and e-Learning and the Science of Instruction text. I would like to design a brief study of the effectiveness of clickers in a high school classroom. I will be starting my 17th year next year, and I teach three sections of honors biology to incoming freshman students. There is an average of twenty students in class, and each class lasts approximately 50 minutes. There is a wide range of performance in the class One day out of five we have a double block to conduct labs. Most classes are designed flexibly around a linear PowerPoint presentation, with built in pauses for reflection on the subject via questions.
Our department currently has two sets of TurningPoint clickers that no one uses, that I would like to start using.
Do you have any suggestions for how to modify the design of your study from Clickers in college classrooms for a situation like mine? Some possible problems I could pursue are; (1) Do clickers increase student performance on objective summative assessments? (2) Do clickers have a positive impact on student perception of class activities? (3) Do clickers increase performance of struggling students on summative assessments? (There are usually around 20% of the students who score in the A+ range regardless of the difficulty of the assessment, while another 20% struggle regardless of the difficulty)
I appreciate any input you can provide
Thank you
Nils McGee
[email protected]
Biology teacher - Pomperaug High School
Hi Nils: Are you considering conducting an experiment on the effectiveness of clickers in the classroom. If so, that is a fairly major task that requires a lot of planning. Your general idea sounds good. Best wishes, Rich Mayer
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Richard E. Mayer
Department of Psychology
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660
[email protected]
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Games and Virtual Worlds
Here I am viewing the Sloodle sandbox. This island is a testing ground for the integration of Moodle and Second Life. As you can see, I really don't know how to operate in this area, but the idea is that any Moodle content can be integrated into Second-Life, with student specific performance on activities being passed to a Moodle site for management. Kind of interesting, but it seems really buggy, and difficult to manage. I think the concept has merit, but I can't imagine having the time to set up a virtual world for classes to meet in. |
Simulations, Games and Virtual Worlds
Nils McGee
Central Connecticut State University
Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer describe principles of design for simulations and games in Chapter 15 of e-Learning and the Science of Instruction. Khe Foon Hew and Wing Sum Cheung describe the research that has been conducted on the use of virtual worlds in education in their paper Use of three-dimensional (3-D) immersive virtual worlds in K-12 and higher education settings: A review of the research. Clark and Mayer should include a discussion of immersive virtual worlds when discussing simulations. Virtual worlds can be created to simulations that students can enter and interact, and game concepts can be incorporated by limiting access to areas until competency has been met in prior areas.
According to Clark and Mayer, the activities involved with the simulation or game “must align with the desired instructional outcomes (Clark & Mayer, 2008). Hew and Cheung cite several examples of research where virtual worlds have been used in education. Hew and Cheung classified these environments as experiential spaces. For example, a course on 3-D object modeling used a virtual world in which the 3-D models could be viewed from a first-person perspective (Hew & Cheung, 2010). I am not positive that this counts as a simulation though, because the parts of the virtual world that the students built were the actual objective of the course.
Clark and Mayer report that the features that motivate during game play (Clark & Mayer, 2008). All of these features are found in virtual worlds, especially the exploration and fantasy components. Hew and Cheung report that most research that has been performed has focused on the affective domain, that is, student attitudes toward learning. They report that students enjoyed using virtual worlds (Hew & Cheung, 2010). Clark and Mayer further point out that a “simulation or game will be successful to the extent that it does not overload working memory and at the same time promotes generative processing aligned with the instructional goal.” (Clark & Mayer, 2008) Although virtual worlds are enjoyable, more research needs to be performed to determine whether the immersive nature of the world produces too large of a cognitive load for learning to be effective.
Both sets of authors agree that more research needs to be performed on this topic. They both indicate that success occurs when the learning environment matches the objectives of the course. They both agree that simulations and games motivate students. Most research on virtual worlds have been in the affective domain, and Clark and Mayer report that students are not the best judges of the way they learn best (Clark & Mayer, 2008).
Bibliography
Abbitt, J., & Ophus, J. (2008). What We Know About the Impacts of WebQuests: A Review of Research. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education Journal, 16(4), 441-456.
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). e-Learning and the Science of Instruction (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Dodge, B. (2001). FOCUS: Five Rules for Writing a Great WebQuest. Learning & Leading with Technology, 28(8), 6-9, 58.
Gaskill, M., McNulty, A., & Brooks, D. W. (2006, April). Learning from WebQuests. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 15(2), 133-136.
Hew, K., & Cheung, W. (2010). Use of three-dimensional (3-D) immersive virtual worlds in K-12 and higher education settings: A review of the research. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(1), 33-55.
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