Response to Linda's Post on Course Tutorials

Linda,

I agree with your statement that the course tutorials are helping to expand our toolkit of technology resources.  I find that I am still most comfortable with the ones with which I was already familiar -- Facebook, Twitter, and Google Bookmarks, but I have used them primarily for personal and professional purposes (I have a Facebook page for my library, used Twitter to post updates to parents when I was a high school librarian, etc.) The tutorials are giving us good insight into using these as teaching tools.  I laughed when you said you have 7 followers for your AP Calculus Twitter feed.  I've had similar experiences!  And I think it's great that your online students have set up their own Facebook group to collaborate for class.  I have seen some great examples of teachers in high school using Facebook and Twitter as a collaboration and communication tool.  Unfortunately, many schools and school systems in the K-12 world discourage or prohibit the use of social media.  I realize this is because some teachers, through lack of professional judgement and common sense, have crossed boundaries, sometimes with very harmful results.  It seems simple and logical to me to establish a policy that teachers cannot be "friends" with students on their personal pages.  Facebook and Twitter accounts that are used for educational purposes should be created specifically for those purposes.  This is less of an issue in higher ed, of course.  Revere & Kovach (2011) explain why they feel Twitter can be useful as a communication tool in college courses.  They see Twitter as a way to engage students in meaningful ways by using it to gather data, communicate with experts, and share course information.  They find that students (those who have smartphones and are almost constantly connected to the Internet, at least) receive and respond to information faster when it is disseminated by tweet rather than through traditional announcement tools in course management systems because many already use Twitter regularly and they do not need to go to a specific course site, login, etc.   Fei, Tian & Ke (2012) compiled their research on best practices for using Twitter in education:

Dunlap and Lowenthal (2009) offered the following five guidelines based on their experience: establishing relevance for students, defining clear expectations for participation, modeling effective Twitter use, building Twitter-derived results into assessment and continuing to actively participate in the Twitter community. Lowe and Laffey (2011) suggested using hashtags and shortened links in tweets, and made several pedagogical recommendations for Twitter integration, including communicating with students the rationale of using Twitter, avoiding over tweeting and information overload, weaving important tweets into lecture and class discussion and using tweets to supplement and back up course material. Finally, Holotescu and Grosseck (2009) suggested developing a specification for evaluating students’ participation in microblogging-based courses and using micro-
blogs in combination with other collaborative technologies.

I think it's just good practice to use the technology that students already have and use regularly when possible, so I have appreciated the tutorials that give us ideas and rationale for doing that.

View Linda Henderson's Blog here.

Fei, G., Tian, L. & Ke, Z. (2012). Tweeting for learning: A critical analysis of research on microblogging in education. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(5), 783-801.

Revere, L. & Kovach, J. (2011).  Online technologies for engaged learning: A meaningful synthesis for educators. The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 2(12), 113-124.