Microblogging and Education

According to Graine Creole, you don't really understand the power of Web 2.0 tools until engage with them. Having not engaged with Twitter or any form of microblogging at all, I am probably not qualified to discuss them. But here goes.

As with all Web 2.0 tools, microblogging could be utilised to encourage collaboration and social learning. As far as I can tell, the most important differences between micro-blogging and other Web 2.0 forms is that it is brief (although quite long compared to nano-blogging ) and, therefore, possibly more suited to being used with smart phones, or iphones, or whatever the kids are calling them these days. Unlike say a blog or discussion board where you might wait for hours or days for a response, microblogging guarantees almost instant feedback from one's peers, or at least those peers who's parents can afford to buy them fancy phones. It, therefore, may allow for a greater intensity of social interaction than say blogs. On the surface, this would seem to have some advantages for education. In, particular, I'd imagine microblogging would be quite useful and time effective way of collaborating on written work – it could be a powerful tool for bouncing ideas of others – and may be beneficial for those less confident with their writing.

As a 'digital immigrant' however, I am a little sceptical of some of the utopian visions for microblogging in education that I have come across on the Web. Given the greater scope for social interaction, there is inevitably more scope for misuse. I'd imagine that as a teacher, it would be difficult to keep track of everyone's tweets – and, therefore, cyber-bullying and off task tweeting may become a problem. Also, while as teachers we should be looking at ways to encourage meaningful collaboration, I get the impression that with the prevalence of social networking on the Web, children are finding it more difficult to form their own unique identities. (Go to your local shopping mall and you'll see what I mean). We should also be encouraging students to think for themselves and not feel the need to be validated by their peers every 10 seconds.

Forget Twitter. Lets get ready for Flutter.

Wikis and wikipedia

Wikipedia - like any other lazy student I love it. The idea of pooling the knowledge of millions of people to continually build a collective understanding of a particular topic or question is an incredible one. No doubt there is a variety of quality that comes from the amount of participation and the quality of the discussions taking place. It seems quite often that the more obscure the topic, the more questionable the reliability.
These are some of my observations of Wikipedia - make of them what you will:
They tend to be a bit of a "balanced" overview. Areas of controversy often seem to be given roughly equal space, often when they don't need to be. They also tend to read like a composite of ideas (as of course they are) rather than pursue a single idea through a document, which make them a tough read for me. Maybe there are wikis that follow more of a pursuasive structure but I haven't come across any in my fairly limited exploring.
While not that new in internet terms, in real world terms Wikipedeia is pretty new. I feel like in some respects our culture hasn't really caught up yet - we're not sure how much faith to put in them. Teachers sometimes treat them with suspicion and tell their students not to use them - I doubt this helps our students develop critical literacy around these potentially rich sources of information. I wonder if many teachers have necessarily had the time to develop these literacies for themselves. I'm not sure I have.
As far as teaching goes, I think these provide amazing opportunities for collaborative learning. I'd imagine a good way to go would be to have small groups working each on a particular aspect of a larger topic - kind of like a "jigsaw" lesson. Students become experts in a particular aspect and collaborate with the other "experts" to shape their part of the larger document. I think a looser, more anything goes, approaches could work for more experienced students given a longer timeframe. The potential to collaborate between schools, or countries, opens up doors for cross-cultural learning and understanding, which is very exciting.

Welcome people of the internet to my humble blog.

Social constructivism:

Educators think it's the shiz. Some parents don't get it. Here's what I think.

We want students to learn to think for themselves rather that repeat a list of facts in parrot fashion. That's apparently what social constructivism is all about. Kids building richer understandings though testing and refining their ideas in a social setting. Hell yeah!

For those, however, not blessed with my awesome class management skills: you may find this tricky. Keeping kids engaged enough to stay on task during collaborative exercises is difficult. Kids like to chat about other stuff. They sometimes like to hit one another. Also, social/inquiry learning type tasks are probably going to require a lot of time and planning, and Deal or No Deal starts at 5.30pm.

Blogs seem like a good way to dip the toes in the world of social constructivism. Much like discussion boards, students can engage in conversations which involve some reflective thought.There is an incentive to stay on task because Mr Gardin is watching. The fact that it is written and has some permanency I think lends itself well into incorporating assessment into collaborative learning too. The blog could work something like a portfolio in demonstrating growth and learning. Blogs also have the whizz bangness that kids so love these days. I'm new to the world of blogs so I'll leave it at that. But yeah, I'm down with blogs and learning.