Wk 10 Blog Post 12

Section I: Learning from hashtags

This week’s #Hashtag search on twitter has been extremely eye opening! I have had a twitter account for more than 5 years and mostly used it as a way to chat and crack jokes with friends I met while in Germany. I’ve used hashtags on twitter and have done a few searches using hashtags, however, I’ve never thought to use twitter for educational hashtags. I did not even know they existed until this week. Being an aspiring teacher, the hashtag I was most interested in was #ntchat which is constructed for new teachers. As soon as I scrolled down I viewed images and tweets that were full of information and helpful tips. One picture in particular displayed a ladder and cartoon drawings explaining the difference between teacher centered classrooms vs. learner focused classrooms. I went to school during a time when no student or teacher thought of the idea of a learner focused classroom so seeing this is very intriguing because that is truly how I feel education should be. Another tweet provided a link to EdSurge News and an article titled Teaching With Your Mouth Shut. Before reading the article, I went through a Q&A with myself to wonder what the article could be about and why the title was so important. The article highlighted some great concepts I have learned during my graduate studies at UTEP. An example being that strictly lecturing and ‘teaching through telling’ is reflection only done by the teacher, not the student. This type of teacher lacks in authenticity for the students, almost guaranteeing that students will only regurgitate the information on an exam and brain dump the knowledge afterwards. It was a great learning experience this week seeing that I am able to use twitter as such a powerful educational resource in my classroom.

Teaching With Your Mouth Shut

Section II: Ideas for using Twitter for teaching and learning

From what we have seen this week, twitter is a powerful resource tool that hundreds of millions of people utilize to connect, laugh, learn and express themselves. It also can be utilized in the classroom as well. One way you can use twitter in the classroom is to have students do a research paper, only using twitter as their resource. This would be best geared for high school students, 9-12^th, who are responsible enough to use a platform like twitter. The teacher can provide a list of hashtags that can steer students in the right direction for their research. The goal for the paper is for students to be able to see that some of their everyday social media platforms can do more than just take display pictures, emoji’s and 160-character venting. This can be completed in every subject across the curriculum.

Another great usage of Twitter in the classroom came from a fellow peer earlier this semester. That idea is for teaching summarizing with the usage of Twitter. Since tweets are limited to only 160 characters, users are required to summarize their thoughts and be creative in limited space. I think that this is age appropriate for 2^nd grade and above in language arts classes. Students must be able to read and write in order for this assignment to work, however, it is a fun and interesting way to incorporate technology and teach summarizing.

Lastly, a way to use twitter in the classroom is through back channling, as mentioned in one of this week’s Lynda videos. This would be most appropriate to use in high school, upper grades due to their maturity levels. Having students logged into twitter during a lector to participate in a classroom discussion that is concurrent with the lector provides opportunities for students who are shy to voice their opinions and participate in the classroom discussions.