Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Personal Learning Network

From my earlier scepticism about Twitter, I find I am now pushing Twitter as a useful tool for teachers. How did that happen?


House Sparrow
Originally uploaded by Gordon McKinlay
It is experiences like Vote with Twitter that have convinced me... and the response I got today when demonstrating Twitter to some BEd students helped confirm it for me. Today I posted the following comment:
Say hello to a group of BEd student teachers and tell them an interesting educational website. #BEd4
The first response came in a minute after I posted this message with @katiebarrowman recommending Glow. In the space of half an hour, we got twenty responses. While these responses were coming in, I got the students to sign up for Delicious. By the time they were set up with Delicious, they had a whole pile of recommendations from Twitter to save to Delicious. Brilliant!

Thank you to all the people who responded on Twitter.

Have you got any success stories to share about how Twitter was useful in learning and teaching?

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Coupling Twitter with Diigo, or Delicious, or Evernote allows me to capture tons of stuff. The amount of great web 2 approaches I am passing on to my teachers is probably worrying them as there is so much.....

Iain Hallahan said...

After a (painfully) slow start, I too am something of a Twevangelist. The opportunities it has put my way, the people it has connected me with and the resources/articles/comments it has pointed me to have been invaluable. Also, my class account has been immensely helpful in engaging parents.

On parent's night, I had sent out an appeal for Tweets so that the parents might see some of the value in using Twitter in the class. The response from the Twitterati was (as usual) beyond my wildest expectations. The next day the class read the Tweets and then we created a Google Map with the tweets mapped on it. This combined geography, ICT, literacy and problem solving in one context-rich valuable activity for the pupils. They were thoroughly engaged, and certainly enjoyed showing 'their' map off later that day.

Have a look if you like, our map is here

MrStrathmore said...

I'm trying to set this sort of network up, although at this point I am only following a few people but I've got some really nice resources from some of the tweets from people who follow people I follow... does this make sense.

One of my major finds was from a the NCETM (www.ncetm.org.uk) with lovely resources for the use of maths (I'm a PGDE(S) Maths guy) in real life. Ever wondered how to work out the material needed to make an Elizabethan ruff?

I just need to get some time to actually tweet. :)

David said...

Hello there

Thanks chaps for these examples. ...And to Mr, the beauty of Twitter is it takes so little time to send a tweet. Find out how you can do it by text, online, by mobile app...

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David Carr said...

I have been working with Caledonian University to develop a Twitter EVS application for netbooks. I use the Twitter api for python to build 2 applications one for the lecturer that can create and send questions, and the other for the students that allows them to answer the questions.

Using the Twitter api allows you to capture alot of data. The application sends students answers as direct messages so I am able to record how many times a student has answered the question, and how long it took them to send their answer or answers. This can help to understand the mindset of each student at the time of answering the question such as did they rush the answer, did they take their time, or if they answered the question more than once were they unsure about the question.

You can read more about the project on my website here: http://davidcarr.eu/twitterevs/twitterevs.html

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