Let’s tweet in class

Twitter kind of reminds me of msn and chat rooms which I am more familiar with, where people discuss and chat with others. But Twitter offers something different, something that can be formally used in classes and more importantly, allow more people and even for outsiders you do not know personally to join in the discussions.

Unlike the e-learning platform that takes time to response and wait for responses, Twitters allow people to communicate with each other immediately on topics. Although most of the Time more that 40% of the tweets are babbling nonsenses, the use of it on the academic use can be very beneficial. In the article,  How Twitter will revolutionize academic research and teaching, it tells us this kind of micro-blogging is a revolution in all fields, academic is not only printed books and articles, but also a window to “facilitate the development of specialized audiences. People read your articles, give feedbacks and even write about your articles and breach more ideas from them. The unidirectional  day are over, and the seminar room of communication had taken the place the auditorium of working alone.

But the biggest drawback of Twitter is that too many people are tweeting on the discussion board, and the tweets becomes very short-life and is “expired” about a week and a half and is getting shorter every day. The post may “disappear” in the huge amount of  tweets, and this is a serious problem that has to be solved if we are using it to discuss important class works and not some pointless chatting. Luckily,  in 10 Ways to Archive Your Tweets and Teach with Twitter? Read This!, they teach us how to fish back the hashes that is needed. This basic function must be mastered before we can tweet and broad our subject and dive in the ocean of knowledge.

Web group for teachers

I have to say Classroom 2.0 really is an amazing web group. I have yet to read all the post or be familiar with all the functions, but I can already say that it is a great web filled with priceless treasures of experiences. More than sixty thousands of people from all fields and all over the world visit and contribute on this site and share their experiences, knowledge and engage in discussions with others. For a teacher, a student or a learner eager to immerse and explore new aspects and share their own experiences, what can be better than getting involved in such a great and organized web group?

I think this web group will be very useful for me because for a teacher, staying in a lab or studying theories is never the case. Especially for language teachers who require constant interactions with students. Teachers learn by a mass amount of experiences and communications of teaching, sharing, evaluating and reconstructing. For example, I can post my lesson plan, and activity I would like to do during class, videos filmed in classes, or a question I don’t understand on the board to ask for opinions and suggestions. I can also read through other posts and find new ideas or give my own opinion. Classroom 2.0 allows all these communication for teachers from all fields to stay updated and share information for improvement and suggestions.

Connecting and evolving

A teacher is becoming more like the internet in these days, especially a homeroom teacher. Asides from giving knowledge and being able to answer all kinds questions asked by the students, they are also being required to “stay updated” in their knowledge and being able to function all kinds of technologies so they are able to help him or herself and the students to stay in current.

Just like what George Siemens said in Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age :“Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge. ‘I store my knowledge in my friends’ is an axiom for collecting knowledge through collecting people”. The jobs of teachers are not only to teach them the knowledge on the textbooks, but also to give and share the experiences students couldn’t have as many as possible. They need to learn how to stay updated, to learn about the rapidly changing world and how to survive in it. What teachers can do is to feed them the experiences, knowledge and wisdom so they could learn, like an on-lined computer that has abundant of information to share and explore whenever students need them.

In The Changing Nature of Knowledge, George Siemens said that “another important thing is to have a strong emphases on the manner of which knowledge is rapidly evolving. So it’s not just what we know today is important, it’s our ability to continue to stay current as knowledge changes.” The internet is one the most rapidly updated and changing nature of things. Just like the internet, teachers are asked to stay in current of their knowledge and constantly add or change their teaching style according to the temporary life.

Hence, I think teachers are like the ever growing internet the evolves with time and constantly connecting to others and absorbing new information.