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| Its official! |
What did I find on my twitter adventure? The question is... what DIDNT I find? Twitter recommended for me to follow 49 different threads after signing up. Ok... that isn't going to happen... so I narrowed it down to about 19. Some of the posts I like, some I don't like so much.
I was able to find many of my colleagues from my medical residency who are involved in academic emergency medicine online (I did a search for emergency medicine), as well as some really cool sites that allow you to follow along for new information, resources, and opportunities for fellowships, scholarships, etc. But there were over 300 feeds that I could choose from (or more... I just stopped scrolling through at some point). Although its a great resource, this can become quite a tedious task.
Busy individuals really, really don't have much time for all this. Its very hard to know/learn what or who to follow, especially for those of us who are a bit older and not so glued to our computers (such as myself). How to use twitter in general isn't really so intuitive. I love that twitter gives you the opportunity to "retweet" a post that you find interesting for the sake of sharing with your "followers." As well as to reply to a neat post that someone else has shared. I also like the use of the hashtag (#) to locate topics that are all related to each other. For example, in residency I learned about the #FOAMed. Didnt really know how to use it.... I typed this in to the twitter search engine, and it basically brought up a bunch of posts from people all over that ended their post in #FOAMed. This doesnt bring up specific information, but it does bring up a lot of cool and related topics one may be interest in, so a great way to expand your knowledge base. My only real question is.... how is this regulated? Can anyone tweet anything and attach this hashtag?
As far as using twitter for educational purposes, there are a lot of pluses and minuses to this strategy.
Q1) Can twitter be used as a useful learning tool for the classroom?
I believe that Twitter does allow students to use their creativity and to express themselves in a non judgmental and safe environment. I really love the idea of students can post stories, share ideas, engage in discussions with each other. As well as neat learning tools such as taking on a persona of a historical figure and writing a journal pretending to be that person! I also love the idea of compiling a collaborative class newspaper on twitter as well. However I really do feel that using solely this method to teach our students promotes introversion. Students are not getting a chance to communicate face to face, which is FAR more difficult than expressing your opinions in writing and behind closed doors. How do I know this? I am a much better communicator in writing. Face to face discussion is not easy, however it is a skill that is beyond important to learn as it is required in the working world. If we teach our students primarily through these technological mediums, how on earth will they ever acquire this skill?
Also, some of the ideas for twitter use were to use a map locator to find each others homes. Knowing where each other live is a great idea, in an idealistic world…. because of stories like columbine high, it may not be a wise decision to do this. I DO like the idea that parents can see what is going on in the classroom and follow along with their child’s tweets. This may work better for elementary school, but middle and high school students may not want their parents commenting on their opinions and classwork.
I am concerned that by using twitter to create a running list of ideas, the children who struggle more will look at other’s posts to formulate an idea of what to say/tweet, and may not really ever learn the skills to think critically or imaginatively on their own. I LOVE idea for using real time tweeting for children who are "blurters" such as for the autistic child in the example powerpoint. What a neat and indirect way to allow a child to express himself, NOT interrupt the classroom, and learn, base on teachers acknowledgement of his blurts, what is pertinent and what is not.
Q2) How will I use twitter now that I am officially part of the family?
Again, there is just too much information on twitter for it to be humanly possible to follow along. However I do plan to use it to keep up to date on what is going on with my colleagues back in chicago, as well as to keep up to date on what is being posted through #FOAMed. It may even inspire me to start my own twitter feed for medical simulation, and see how many followers I get! :)
