Twitter is one
of Social Media’s fastest growing communication tools. Until recently, 140
characters was the limit for posting.
According to CNN Tech
The 140-character length wasn't a random choice: Twitter's founders wanted
tweets to fit in a text message, which can only hold 160 characters. So,
Twitter chose 140 characters for the tweet, and 20 characters for the user
name. According to Twitter
Statistics, as of January 2018, there were over 330 million active
Twitter users. 80% of users access the app via a Mobile device. 67 million of
the 330 million users live in the United States. Over 500 million Tweets are
sent per day from 100 million active users. 35% of users are between the ages of 18-29.
How can Middle and High School
teachers engage students on Twitter when statistics indicate that the median
age group is 18 and older? One advantage for educators may be the use of Mobile
devices. Mobile device use among teenage students is high. The average
15-year-old owns their own smart phone and has access to Social Media Apps i.e.
Face Book, Twitter, Snap Chat and text messaging. Students have already begun
to learn the benefit of collaborating through group text messaging and emails.
Teachers are challenged with the task of brainstorming new ideas to stay
technologically connected with their students.
According to an article by
Fracturs Learning, a
group of students can use Twitter for research on a particular topic and start
their own hashtag to quickly and collaboratively save all their findings into
one common stream. By adding the hashtag to each relevant tweet, they find they
will each individually be able to search for it and see the results collected
by other members of the team or class, regardless of whether they are in the
same location. A great homework assignment would be to ask students to research
a topic on Twitter, marking relevant tweets with a hashtag in this way and then
looking at the stream together and analyzing their results in class the next
day (Bates, 2017) .
Select one of the 5 Great Ways for Students to Collaborate on Twitter and briefly describe or give an example of how you would integrate your selection as a learning or collaboration exercise for your students.
I think the use of hashtags would be a great way for students to collaborate on a projects. Students can use a group hashtag to collaborate while doing research to communicate ideas, share links to different pages, and so on. I believe this is actually a really easy way for the students to collaborate with on another rather than having to meet face to face, call, email, or text one another. The ease of use will probably lead to greater outcomes, as well as get the students excited about the research that they are doing. I would put students in small groups and give them a research topic. The 4-5 students would create a hashtag to share on their social media to communicate ideas with each other throughout the research process. The students would then use the hashtag to present their research process to the rest of the class as the hashtag can be easily followed back (if it is a very unique hashtag.) I think I would try to incorporate some sort of evaluation for the other groups in the class. They would be able to look up the other groups hashtags and follow their peers research process.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.teachthought.com/technology/5-dead-simple-ways-students-can-use-hashtags-for-learning/
I love the idea of "Hash Tags." Like you, I think that students would enjoy this type assignment. I did not view it as research but you are absolutely correct. When students search for the key term, all of the data related to the :Hash Tag" would populate. I also like that you narrowed this down to 4-5 students and assigning the other groups a separate, but related assignment.
DeleteCollaborating with subject leaders seemed to be the most useful feature of twitter. If students are looking at careers for an assignment, they could tweet at several leaders in that field, asking questions about a specific position or asking about the industry as a whole. While some might not respond (The President, The Pope), there are still many other leaders in the fields of politics and religion that the student can tweet at. Writing letters and emailing were never as effective as a tweet. This can give them an honest, upfront look at the career field they want to go into to help them make their decision. Besides communicating directly with the leader, they can at the very least follow what that leader is up to, what legislation the President wants to see Congress pass, what the Pope's main themes of a Sunday mass might be. This will give them an indirect look into what their heroes believe and inform them of what's going on in that industry. Communicating with and following a leader of an industry or field is something Twitter does exceptionally well, and is a great tool for students to use in their academic and professional development.
ReplyDeleteNoah, I love your idea of collaborating with subject leaders for students. This is a good way to introduce students to Twitter and user strategies. Twitter is not very popular with students 18 years or younger, because the feeds are a lot different from Face Book. Interactions on Twitter appear to be a lot less personal. I would definitely integrate a project like this to Middle and High School Students.
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