Teaching and Learning with Twitter

Teaching and Learning with

Steve WheelerUniversity of Plymouth, UK

@timbuckteeth

Microblogs and Social Networks

• Allows users to send brief text updates or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them

• Examples include: Plurk, Jaiku and Twitter• Facebook, Myspace, etc. have microblogging

features known as ‘status updates’.• What are you doing?• What’s happening?

People are living their lives online...

Is it really like this...?

140RT and DM #ulearn10@timbuckteeth

Go Global

Twitter in Plain English

Activity: Set up your Twitter account

• Go to www.twitter.com• Create an account• Choose a user name• Choose an avatar (picture to represent you)• Start to ‘follow’ other Twitter users

Some facts about

• Twitter takes time...– to build up a network– to develop your own Twitter style– to appreciate its full scope

• It’s all about the conversation• Large number of associated tools (Mashups)• Twitter is growing fast...

Some views on Twitter...

Why Twitter?

Unique worldwide users over 100 million (June 2010)

What to Tweet about?

What to Tweet about?

• Conversation is the new currency• Twitter is an amplifier• Tweets can ‘go viral’ if enough RTs• DMs are private conversations• Learn a lot from other people’s tweets

More Twitter views...

Let’s take a brief tour of Twitter...

navigation

navigation

user iconuser info

navigation

user iconuser info

activities

following

navigation

user iconuser info

activities

followingretweet

hashtag

hyperlink

update box

you choose a background

public timeline

mentions

DMs

trending

Twitter relationships...

More on relationships...

Activity: Disadvantages?• Spend a few moments discussing with

someone in your group: What do you think the disadvantages and barriers would be to using Twitter in an educational context?

The downside?

• Time consuming• Slow to start• Noise to signal ratio• Distracting• Security issues?• Ban in some schools• Spam followers!

Twitter culture – RTs and the rest...

5 Twitter stages• Denial: I think Twitter sounds stupid. Why would

anyone care what other people are doing right now?• Presence: OK, I don’t get why people love it, but I

guess I could at least create an account• Dumping: I’m on Twitter and using it for links to my

blog posts and pointing people to useful websites• Conversing: I don’t always post useful stuff, but I use

Twitter to have useful 1-1 conversations• Microblogging: I’m using Twitter to publish useful

information that people read, and I have authentic 1-1 conversations.

(Adapted from Minxuan Lee)

Following and followers

Either

Carefully select the people you want to follow based on their interests/background

or

Go on follow recommendations from people you trust

(See TweepML.org)

or

Follow the same people your friends are following

Activity: Explore some additional tools

• Tweetdeck (dashboard)• Twitpic, Tweetphoto• Twitterpoll• Twitterfall• Mr Tweet• Twitlonger, Woofer• TweepML

Twitter is here to stay.....

Some theory...

• Reflection• Amplification• Collaboration and sharing• Interaction and Conversation• Knowledge generation

How can Twitter be used...?

Teaching with Twitter

• Discuss – how could you use Twitter ...– in your own teaching?– To extend your own PLN?– To create a community of practice?

Twitter teaching ideas

Activity: Your turn

• What are your ideas for using Twitter in your own classroom?

Twittering at Conferences

• Try twittering at this conference• Hashtag is: #ulearn10• Be concise• Report on what you think will be

interesting to other people• Reply to others• Send useful URLs

Tweet you later!