Tweeting Your Way to Better Grades - U.S. News & World Report
One of our very own MC POPPERS William Kist (author of New Literacies in Action) is featured in this U.S. News and World Report Article on Tweeting
Tweeting Your Way to Better Grades
Twitter actually can be a helpful study tool, some students and educators say
By Zach Miners
Posted June 15, 2009
Sammy Garey, a recent graduate of Burlingame High School in Burlingame, Calif., is a devoted user of Twitter. She's used the website with her classmates for online book discussions for her AP English class, in which they post and share feedback, analysis, and questions about novels such as Crime and Punishment. Garey also turns to the website to check breaking news and feed her interest in science by following the tweets of specialized Twitter accounts such as MedUpdates and DrugInfo.
"It's the new frontier," she says. "This is the direction the world is heading in, and there's no better place to start than in the classroom."
Twitter, the Web service that lets people post and share messages of 140 characters or fewer, is enjoying a popularity surge in general. But on the education front in particular, some forward-thinking college professors are embracing it and finding ways to include it in courses, and teachers at the K-12 level are also experimenting with the social networking website. Using Twitter in a classroom setting can bring challenges, but some educators and students think it's a tool that can boost the learning process.
Delainia Haug, an English teacher at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, says that taking the online social networking applications that teenagers depend on outside of school—such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace—and bringing them into an academic space is critical for student engagement.
But other educators aren't so sure. William Kist, who teaches in the college of education at Kent State University in Ohio, says that using technologies like Twitter in the classroom—especially at the K-12 level—could be risky because the sites might expose students to Internet predators. He keeps a Twitter account, but he uses it solely as a "digital faculty lounge" where he can network with other professors. He is hesitant to follow the Twitter accounts of any of his students—given the typically personal nature of their updates—and is not aware of many students who follow his.
Complete article from U.S. News and World Report here.
Tweeting Your Way to Better Grades
Twitter actually can be a helpful study tool, some students and educators say
By Zach Miners
Posted June 15, 2009
Sammy Garey, a recent graduate of Burlingame High School in Burlingame, Calif., is a devoted user of Twitter. She's used the website with her classmates for online book discussions for her AP English class, in which they post and share feedback, analysis, and questions about novels such as Crime and Punishment. Garey also turns to the website to check breaking news and feed her interest in science by following the tweets of specialized Twitter accounts such as MedUpdates and DrugInfo.
"It's the new frontier," she says. "This is the direction the world is heading in, and there's no better place to start than in the classroom."
Twitter, the Web service that lets people post and share messages of 140 characters or fewer, is enjoying a popularity surge in general. But on the education front in particular, some forward-thinking college professors are embracing it and finding ways to include it in courses, and teachers at the K-12 level are also experimenting with the social networking website. Using Twitter in a classroom setting can bring challenges, but some educators and students think it's a tool that can boost the learning process.
Delainia Haug, an English teacher at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis, says that taking the online social networking applications that teenagers depend on outside of school—such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace—and bringing them into an academic space is critical for student engagement.
But other educators aren't so sure. William Kist, who teaches in the college of education at Kent State University in Ohio, says that using technologies like Twitter in the classroom—especially at the K-12 level—could be risky because the sites might expose students to Internet predators. He keeps a Twitter account, but he uses it solely as a "digital faculty lounge" where he can network with other professors. He is hesitant to follow the Twitter accounts of any of his students—given the typically personal nature of their updates—and is not aware of many students who follow his.
Complete article from U.S. News and World Report here.
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