The Chronicle of Higher Education reported how a professor encouraged his students to contribute to his ‘live’ classes via Twitter.

It did not work at first, but after a few weeks, they started

floating ideas or posting links to related materials… in some cases, a shy student would type an observation or question on Twitter, and others in the class would respond with notes encouraging the student to raise the topic out loud. Other times, one of the professors would see a link posted by a student and stop class to discuss it.

Why did he do this?

He replied that his hope is that the second layer of conversation will disrupt the old classroom model and allow new kinds of teaching in which students play a greater role and information is pulled in from outside the classroom walls.

Bravo! I might just do something like this next semester. Perhaps I’ll encourage my teacher trainees to tweet more than blog. For that matter, I think I may require them to maintain small group blogs rather than individual ones.

Like last semester, I wondered if I should maintain this blog between semesters. Also like the last semester, I have decided to do so, but perhaps less frequently. I will probably tweet (microblog) more.

Yesterday I found two articles:

Web 2.0 Classrooms Versus Learning?

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3698/web-20-classrooms-versus-learning

Why “versus” in the title? In the context of that Chronicle piece, professors saw Web 2.0 and mobile technologies as barriers to teaching. I see them as enablers of learning. See the difference?

Teachers Driving Web 2.0 Use in Schools Says National Research Survey
http://www.prweb.com/releases/Web20/schools/prweb2300494.htm
Could the same be true for teachers here in Singapore? I am vaguely aware that there are school districts in the US that clamp down on social networking sites and even have policies that dictate that teachers should reject “friend” requests from students!

As far as I know, we have next to no barriers like these. But I doubt that teachers here are driving educational Web 2.0 use. They should see what my classes get up to for inspiration!

UPDATED on 8 Apr 09:
Teachers Lead Adoption of Web 2.0, but Perceptions Stifle Social Networking
http://www.thejournal.com/articles/24227
See page 2 of the Web article for why “83 percent said that few or no teachers are using social networking technologies”.

Twittering is stupid… but only if you answer Twitter’s question: What are you doing?

If that is all you do, then this YouTube video applies to you.

But if you use your noggin, you’ll first realise what the people behind the video are trying to say. You’ll also find, as I have, Twitter to be as indispensable as RSS feeds for connecting with relevant people and getting meaningful information.

Finally, educators have begun testing ways to use Twitter (not all are good though) and, for those new to Twitter, know that at least one person has suggested seven stages of Twitter acceptance.

Tweets are sweet!

Using Twitter, I started following the thoughts of Tom Barrett, a teacher in Nottingham, England, after a recommendation from Mr Tweet.

From his tweets, I found a shared Google presentation on “18 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom“!

Twitblogs sounds like an insult, doesn’t it? It is actually a service that allows you to go beyond the 140-character limit of Twitter… if you need to. According to their Web site,  you already have a Twitblog account if you have a Twitter account!

But I am not sure what to think about this service. Twitter purists will argue that the point of tweets is to maintain a “stream of consciousness” and keep entries short. Bloggers will argue that they can write short entries anyway. Twitter could relent and increase the number of characters if they did away with the SMS feature.

I might try Twitblogs on for size. Then again, I might not. There is no real pull factor at the moment.

I just discovered TweekDeck after reading a blog entry by Beth.

TweetDeck is a great way of finding tweets that are relevant to me. It is also an excellent tool for organising the buzzing, blooming confusion that tweets are!

If you were affected by the Edublogs recent outages, you can get $10 credited to your account.

Here is the tweet I received on Oct 10:

Please email support@edublogs.org for a $10 credit for each user by means of an apology. Just let us know your username.

This is not a prank or a ruse. The $10 can be used to upgrade your account.

A teacher in Nottingham, UK, started following my Tweets so I looked up his profile on Twitter.

Amidst all the chatter was an interesting link to three Flickr photos of his classroom. His students were using Voicethread, a Web 2.0 tool that allows users to annotate photos with text or voice.

I noticed that he did not feature his students prominently in his photos, probably in a bid to protect their privacy. But he did mention how he wanted them to either write or speak their mind in the activity.

It was an example of a simple but pretty powerful activity. Learners could rely on either mode of commenting or critiquing an artefact. As they gained in confidence and took in the examples left by their peers, they could attempt their weaker mode of communication. Traditional lessons would typically focus on only one mode or the other, rarely both at the same time and based on the learner’s ability.

I also thought that the activity was an example of promoting relevant technology and media literacies. It was addressing what digital natives seem almost pre-wired to do and what they need to further develop. I can only hope that he continues to look for opportunities to integrate technology in meaningful ways.

On further reflection, I am reminded of how Web 2.0 brings people together. It is human nature to want face-to-face contact. But I value the meeting of the minds even more. And if interacting online leads to collaboration without unnecessary emotional, religious, cultural, etc. baggage, then so be it!