This link has been bookmarked by 14 people . It was first bookmarked on 30 May 2009, by Kyle Stevens.
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20 Oct 09
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02 Sep 09
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I
used twitter in the basic U.S. History II survey course at U.T. Dallas in the
spring 2009 semester. -
I had one
graduate student teaching assistant to help with grading and other
administrative duties for the class. - 16 more annotations...
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I wanted to find a way to incorporate more student-centered learning
techniques and involve the students more fully into the material. -
Twitter users had the
option of posting updates or comments either through the twitter website or by
text messaging on a mobile phone. -
But
nearly every student in the class had a mobile phone and used text messaging
features regularly. -
The idea was to set up all of the students on twitter
while they were in class and have them post discussion ideas/questions and
respond to each other using twitter. -
First, I set up a twitter account for the class called ushistoryII. -
Many of them had never heard of twitter and
only a few were actually using twitter at the time, so this was new technology
to them as well. -
Following
Kim’s suggestion, I gave the students special hash tags to use on all of their
comments. -
I loaded tweetdeck on the classroom computer
and projected it onto the large screen at the front of the room so students
could watch the stream of comments. -
This was an important aspect of our twitter
experiment. With 90 students in one
room, I needed the TA’s participation to make this format work. She was completely on board and energetic
about trying new things and figuring out how to make twitter an effective
classroom tool. -
With our “best practices,” we found that
twitter was most effective when it was combined with other discussion
strategies (small group discussions, interaction with the instructor, and processing
as an entire class.) Twitter did not
replace more conventional discussion formats; instead it enhanced the
discussions and brought more student interaction. -
Since
twitter is a public and open access internet technology, I made twitter participation
optional for students. -
here were also some students
who either did not have the equipment (laptop computer) to use twitter in class
or who did not have an unlimited texting plan on the cell phone. -
The
TA would go through all of the comments after class and send a direct response
to any tweets that needed to be addressed—including questions that remained
unanswered or exceptional comments that warranted direct feedback. -
I suspect that this bothered me more than it
bothered the students. I tend to think
and process information in a much more structural manner. Most of the students (in their world of
intense multi-tasking) seemed completely capable of following several streams
of thought at one time. -
Overall,
I think the twitter experiment was successful primarily because it encouraged
students to engage who otherwise would not. -
Even in smaller classes, only a small number of students actively
participate in class discussions.
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18 Aug 09
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07 Aug 09
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10 Jul 09
Spiro BolosGreat practical advice from Monica Rankin
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09 Jul 09
Anne FoxHow to use twitter to increase discussion in a large class. Guess edmodo could be an alternative except that it would not have th option of bringing externals in.
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Kathy CannonThis write-up is intended as an informal summary of my use of twitter in the classroom
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01 Jul 09
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24 Jun 09
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02 Jun 09
Mathieu PlourdeThis write-up is intended as an informal summary of my use of twitter in the classroom.
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30 May 09
Kyle StevensProfessor reflects on use of Twitter during survey course at UT Dallas.
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