Twitter

Today, Twitter-Dee and myself presented on the topic Twitter. Basically it is a free, social-networking application which allows user to send short 140 character 'tweets' or messages. It is essentially a micro-blogging system where users can update their statuses mainly through either computer or most commonly their mobile phones. It gives users the opporunity to follow other people who they may be interested in. The good thing about this program is that users can connect with different people around the world and more specifically they can follow their idols or various celebrities.

There are many tools in Twitter that make it easy to follow such as clicking on a person name to directly reply to their comment. For example; If I was to reply to John Smith, it would appear as "@ John Smith" followed by my reply. Other various tools include the # key which acts as a quick search engine of all the tweets which contain that specific word or topic. In addition, there are many programs which support the use of Twitter and may make the experience more easy to use and more enjoyable.

We have acknowledge the following as limitations of using Twitter in the classroom:
- Too distracting: It is difficult for the teacher to moderate students' activities
- Does not take into consideration students with diverse abilities: Students may already find it hard to concentrate and with this fast paced application they may be left out
- Multitasking increases stress – affects other learning areas
- Reduces ‘on task’ behaviours: Students are more likely to be distracted and engage in other acitivities
- Can go against classroom expectations – courtesy etc.
- Difficult to monitor/regulate: Teacher is not able to delete or modify students' comments without gaining access of all students accounts and individually going through them
- Time consuming for the teacher
- Difficult to get started

However, we do support the idea of using Twitter as a means of communication via Teacher/School and parents. It allows busy parents to be updated with the events that occur within their students school and classroom. There are a few schools already that use Twitter as a communication school and it seems to be working well for them! The parents and students are able to be reminded of things such as excursions, tests or any other important news!