This article in the New York Times called Students Speak Up In Class, Silently, Using Social Media, talks about using a sort of like a twitter in the classroom. It is a backchannel system where students could ask questions and participate in lectures without having to raise their hands. This is great when it comes to those students who are shy and do not like to speak up in class. I hate speaking up in class, it gives me anxiety, and i get nervous. This is how a lot of the students who are shy in class feel, and this new program helps them get through their fear and earn some participation points in class. Its much easier to type in a comment or an answer to a question where no one has their eyes on you and are judging you.
This has become a little controversial. Some say that schools worked so hard to keep text messaging and social networks away from schools and this type of program brings it back. Some say its a great idea to create participation within the whole class, and let those people who do not participate in person, do so by the computer. It encourages dialogue within the students, and a classroom experience that almost no-one has yet to experience.
This blog for example is a great way to communicate and give your opinions about the different articles that we each post. It creates communication within the students and the professor even for those who are shy to say anything in class.
-Armenis Perez
I think this is a great idea as I am also one of those who hate to speak in class so I would love if this happens. In a way it’s like blackboard except that Blackboard takes place outside of the classroom but on the blackboard discussion boards you can have a conversation with your professor or classmates similar to one you would have in class but you do not have to worry about being to shy to talk. I think it has the possibility if they followed through with this to open students up more and make class more fun as in most classes you have the same few students always participating while the rest of us either raise our hand once in a while or never participate at all in class.
The problem you run into with using twitter in the classroom especially at the High School Level is that those students who is into twitter and have an account already would probably zone out of the class conversations on twitter and instead will be talking to friends on twitter. I think it has it positives and of course it’s negatives because students being on a social network website for the entire class period can never be a good thing for any professor/teacher. I think it is best to use it how some professors uses blackboard which is a way to create dialogue about the class when we are not in the classroom.
I don’t think twittering in the class room is a positive. Learning is about interaction and learning from each other. I think don’t that a child can truly get the essence of learning by twittering a question to the teacher. Furthermore how can a child overcome their fear of speaking and being shying if they are allowed to ask question via twitter. Social media is good for a number of things however in the class room to communicate with teacher is not one of them
Not only can this disrupt the student teacher interaction, it can also distract students from the lesson of the day because giving them access to twitter in the class they can go on to their personal pages and not pay attention in class.
On the other hand I can also see how Twitter in the class can benefit students by teaching them that social media tools can be useful in positive way. I don’t think that twitter should be used to replace traditional teaching but it can be used as a medium to facilities teaching for the purposes of learning how social media works.