HW#2: My experience Tweeting for 48 hours

The most significant thing I learned this week

This experiment really got me thinking about what exactly a classroom is, and the place that the classroom holds in the learning process.

First, obviously the classroom does not have a lock on learning. Actually, the less it does, the more effective it is at nurturing independent life-long learners. But apart from that, there is the question of who exactly creates the classroom, and who owns it?

The classroom as four walls within a larger building on a specific campus still exists, and has its place. But for the purposes of this course, and in thinking ahead, we are really discussing a much broader concept of classroom. Once you surrender a physical definition of space, then the perceptions held by the users of a space do not need to hew to those of the creator of that space. In which case, whose perceptions have primacy? What are the politics of this? Especially what are the power structures that are torn down and recreated by this?

Since we are discussing school children here, who are not autonomous entities as compared to, say, college students, I think the questions of who holds the power and how are quite pertinent – esp. since the overwhelmingly majority of school-age teaching happens in tax-supported institutions

The time- and space-shifting possibilities created by modern communication technologies allow the classroom to be anywhere, and at anytime. No doubt, this is a two-edged sword. How exactly does one cleave the discussion to highlight the benefits and the costs? The possibilities and the potholes?


Questions I have and what do I want to learn more about?

What I desperately need at this time is a pedagogical framework within I can think about the role of technology in teaching, building community, and in communicating (one-to-many, many-to-many, and many-to-one).

I feel that these three issues are distinct, and are too often covered under one umbrella as if they were all the same.

The framework need not be one I agree with; just one that can help to organize and provoke my thinking. The readings helped, but only a bit, because they were primarily addressing other issues.

[Related to this is my gripe about the use of the buzz-word Technology in schools today. By starting this course with an emphasis on Twitter, Facebook, etc. I feel it too is succumbing to this lack of discernment.]


What applications do I see to classroom practice based on what I have learned?

My first, and very strong, reaction is that Twitter won’t work in the school classroom. However if I do find myself in a non-traditional classroom (e.g. afterschool community-based science explorations) then it might hold out some benefits.

Jan had a really good idea of letting 7-yr olds use Twitter. I initially got bogged down in privacy and safety issues, but then realized that the 140 character limit could be extremely liberating for a child with writer’s block.

Whether Twitter specifically has application or not, the 48-hr experience has been extremely useful in generating the seeds of what I would want to see any and future technologies, and what high-friction points I would watch out for.

I now have a whole list of things I dislike about Twitter.