Technology Access
I have never looked at or used Twitter before, so this assignment gave me an insight into the website and potentials it has for use inside the classroom.
Understandably, an administrator would want to block the site because it is a social networking site. Most of the tweets or posts are not censored, clean, or appropriate for the classroom setting. Moreover, students also must have confidentiality and anonymity protection. If students post personal information, the site could be dangerous to them by attracting predators or other types of people looking to harm them. The student’s privacy must be protected. Furthermore, the parents may not be very understanding when they see their child on twitter doing “homework assignments” when they are supposed to be doing chores. Since twitter is a social networking site, some backlash may occur when used in the classroom.
In the account tab of settings on twitter, the website has an option at the very bottom to “Protect my tweets.” If the teacher and students all select this option, their tweets are protected from search results, and followers of their twitter must be approved. All the students would have to do is subscribe to the teacher and protect their tweets to respond. In addition, if students subscribed to their classroom peers, it would open communication and encourage or provoke thought. Twitter is more accessible in the sense that it may be access from any phone with text messaging service and any computer with internet access. So students have more time and availability to post and respond to tweets. Teachers could post a daily question requiring students to respond every night, or they could start a poll, or even start an informal, appropriate, respectful and clean debate.
Teachers would have to make sure that the students click on the “Protect my tweets” tab before students could respond. It would also have to be clear that students should not post any private or personal information on their profile or comments. To make sure this happens and it understood, perhaps a parent and child consent form would be signed to be positive students understand not to post their last name, name of the school they attend, their age, etc.
dc said,
November 3, 2009 at 4:09 pm
It will be interesting to see how schools adapt to social networking…and adapt they must do, it seems. It’s not going away, and will likely become an increasingly central part of our lives.