Horton Hears a Tweet? ABSOLUTELY!!!

What a WONDERFUL title: Horton Hears a Tweet!!!  This is the title of an EduCause article by Joanna Dunlap and Patrick Lowenthal is a comprehensive and insightful article about how Twitter can fulfill the "Challenge of Student Engagement".   What I really like about this article is that they compare the process of using Twitter for communication with the process of using an LMS.  They talk about how clunky using the LMS for communication can be. It follows the process of:

 Log In>Access Shell>Locate Forum>Post Message>Wait for Response 

When compared to Twitter's "natural free-flowing, just-in-time" connection, this is a system for documenting communication rather than fostering it.

Dunlap and Lowenthal discuss the interactivity of using Twitter with both students and professionals. They talk about the positive results and benefits for using Twitter for back-channeling and on-going relevant discussions.  They even share events where students answered their own questions using Twitter as an entre to their PLN.  They posted questions about projects and received responses in 10 minutes.   The only thing that is missing is a discussion of the negatives of using Twitter - - - - I must admit that I can't think of any either, but I thought that they might have some ideas. =-)

This article is MUST-READ material for educators and students alike.  They even include a robust list of Additional Readings and Resources.

What do you think? Have you found Twitter to be as advantageous as they say?

Z

Related articles

• The art of tweeting--Jasmine's Tech Dos & Don'ts
• Tweet Tweet!
• How To Manage Twitter: Do It Your Way
• How I learned to stop worrying and tweet, Part 2
• The First Tweets from my Classroom.

Using BackChannels in Lectures

What? You want students to chat online while I am lecturing? How can they do that? They won't be paying attention to me and then they won't learn everything that there is to know about the topic upon which I am lecturing!!!!! 

This is the problem with technology. You think that it is something that solves everything when it actually just creates more problems and distractions for students.

Have you ever been involved in a back channel while listening to a lecturer? A back channel is a teacher-sanctioned chat room that enables students to discuss what is happening in class.  This provides an opportunity for them to share ideas and even develop new ones with the flood of information being provided by the presenter.

We teach a class entitled Educational Technology and Design. It is the Technology Intro course that virtually every teacher education student must take. Our team is an exceptional group of educators who are always exploring new ideas about how to use technology to support learning in new and effective methods.

A couple of years ago we introduced Back Channeling.  It was an idea that Robin Galloway championed to provide an online conversation option for students.  We use CoverItLive and we typically have 1 or 2 professors moderating it to ensure that things are on-track as the presentation progresses.

I should mention that we are not passive about back channeling with the 120 students in our lectures. Not only do we urge our students to bring their laptops (about 95% of them own laptops) AND we provide 20 netbooks for students to use. Some of them were using their smart phones to get online. While there are typically some problems with everyone connecting with the wifi, we had about 60 students linked into the back channel today.

Our back channeling has been successful throughout the years. There are some sessions that have had exceptionally good interaction while some that have been quite wanting. Today's back channel was quite successful.  I was lecturing about Web 2.0 and Digital Natives/Millennials. 

One of the most important things that I was trying to achieve was to create a learning environment that was "different" than what our students had previously experienced in a lecture hall.  We began with asking them all to "pull out your phones."  This shocked many of them but I wanted them to use their phones as clickers to provide feedback using Poll Everywhere.  It worked quite well.

I also made a big thing about using the back channel. We used it for interaction and you will find some interesting responses throughout the discussion by clicking on the image to the right.

The students were tweeting as well to share what they were learning and experiencing. Check out what they included using the #unietd hashtag.

Based upon what the students were saying, this was a game-changing experience for many of them.  We hope that they will take this experience and use it to "think different" about their teaching and learning experiences in other classrooms.

What do you think?  What do you do to give your students a voice?

Backchanneling in 1st Grade?

Backchanneling is a process where students converse in an online chatroom, usually while listening to a lecture or watching a multimedia presentation of some sort. We have been using backchanneling with our university students at the University of Northern Iowa. Rob Galloway talks about this on his blog. We have been using CoverItLive to allow our students to discuss what is happening in a 200-person lecture.  It has been quite effective.

Imagine my surprise when I saw Cyndi Danner-Kuhn's discussion of back channeling It appears that she hasn't actually done it yet, but referred to a couple of teachers who have used backchanneling in their elementary classrooms.

The first one is by "A First Grade Teacher" (I will refer to "her" as AFGT since I can't find his/her name anywhere) who tells of using TodaysMeet as a backchannel for his/her 1st graders. The initial experience was almost accidental. She used the chat room as a brainstorming exercise and it was a huge success. Later, she had her students chat while watching an online presentation about teaching with technology. The adults involved in the process were backchanneling too, and AFGT compared the structure of the chat logs of the two age groups.  The fascinating part was the similarity that she found between the structure of the discussions of the two groups. "Both groups started out with greetings, shared many of the same concerns, and even interjected with some light-hearted exchanges between on-task discussions. "

I would like to see the chat logs of AFGT's students.  It would be interesting to review their lines of thought and how they expressed it.  I have asked AFGT to share them, but haven't heard back yet.  (on 8/19/10, Aviva (AFGT's real name) sent me a link to the chat log.  Quite interesting. You should check out her comment below.)

The other example was from Sylvia Tolisano and how she used back channeling with a 5th grade class. I am a big fan of Sylvia's. She is an extremely innovative educator. The difference between her posting and AFGT's is that Sylvia is quite descriptive about the steps she took and the results she observed. The teacher she was helping wanted her students to use the backchannel as a way to review questions for a social science test. This is a completely different circumstance than AFGT. The teacher asked a question and all of the students could answer at the same time. Interestingly enough, the students did quite well on their tests.  Here is a comment from Mrs. Z (no relation) "I am totally amazed.  The kids took their Social Studies test on Friday and I have never seen such good papers!  I am convinced the back channeling was a major factor."

I have never used TodaysMeet but it looks like the kind of tool I would want to use in the classroom. It is easy to set up. The discussion room can exist from 2 hours to 1 year.  It can even integrate Tweets using a specified #hashtag. It isn't as functional as CoverItLive, but sometimes we don't need all of that.

What do you use?  Is 1st grade too young to backchannel?  If you aren't using backchanneling now, how do you think that you could integrate it into your class?

Z

• Seven Things You Should Know about Backchanneling.
• Backchanneling in Middle School Social Studies.
• 10 Sites for Backchanneling
  

photo:flickr.com/kevin_marks

Twitter Covers the World

I am receiving Tweets (that's a Twitter message) from friends as they travel the world. They are all traveling from America to other parts of the world. The map above shows the homes of Twitter users. Looks like Europe is inundated and the US isn't too far behind. I found this map in an interesting article recommended by Lois Lindell, Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities.

It's interesting to think about how we can communicate at the touch of a button. I received a tweet from Howard Reingold asking if anyone knew of "Any ideas on using Twitter in classroom besides backchannel." He said that students could twitter insights, comments and questions during class discussions. That's an interesting idea.

What other kinds of educational applications are there? Is this just a solution looking for a problem, or is it a new utility that will allow us to do things that will expand our learning experiences?

What do you think? Does Twitter have any educational value?