Twitter and Worlde in the Classroom
Technology is a wonderful thing. It helps us stay connect with family, research topics without going to the library to get a book and in some ways can improve our lives. Out of the top twenty five articles I chose two that really hit home, “25 Ways to Teach with Twitter” by Sonja Cole and “Why Worlde?” in the TL Advisor Blog written by Steven W. Anderson. Throughout this essay I will be using the articles to critically think about technology in a classroom setting.
In “25 Ways to Teach with Twitter” Sonja introduces the reader with the basics of Twitter. I personally have a Twitter account that I use every day. I use my Twitter for many things from telling the Twittervers what I’m going to be doing today to asking if any movies are good. Sonja suggests that teachers use twitter to look for suggestions on lessons to readings and answers to some of their professional questions such as “Is there a way to find out when your teaching certificate expires? (Cole, 2009).” She makes many other points on ways to use Twitter as a teacher.
Since I use Twitter on a daily basis I understand how Sonja thinks teachers should use their Twitters, I only ask myself “Is there anyway students and teachers could work together on Twitter?” I believe that students could take to the Twittervers and ask questions much like their teachers or use it in some way to connect back to the classroom. A possible way to have a teacher use Twitter in their classroom with their students could be for example have them correct a grammar tweet much like my Daily Oral Language I did in school. Instead of using paper and pencil the students would use their Twitter.
I chose the article “Why Wordle?” because I have personally worked with Wordle in the past and loved it. Last year during my bridge class our professor introduces us to Wordle. We used Wordle to come up with key words that describe the types of teachers we want to be, types of students we would have and why we wanted to be teachers. After we entered the key words and created the design we could see what was really important to us. It really opened up our eyes to the similarities and differences we all had.
Steven says “The possibilities are endless really (Anderson, 2009).” This is completely true. In the article he used tweets from teachers with ways they use twitter. Many say to teach vocabulary, main points, concepts, and key words. As a teacher you could take time before each class ends to have the student make their own Wordle document with what they think is the important things you talked about today or work together as a class to form a class wide one. Either way by the re evaluating what they learned I feel they will be more likely to remember things. Also you could review the Worlde document before the class next day or at the end of the week summarizing what you’ve talked about.
Using Worlde to summarize or re evaluate what you’ve learned in my opinion is a great way to get students to have a little bit of fun while remembering. However I believe that if Worlde is not used properly than it will have no impact at all. Just giving students random words to think about without even discussing does nothing for them. Students should be involved also to increase class involvement. If students don’t feel like they are worth anything and are just learning stuff because they have to without any explanation they are not going to care about school.
Both articles give excellent examples on ways to use the internet in and out of the classroom. I personally believe that if teachers incorporated the new technology that most of their students are using then students would be more interested in class and the topics they are learning about. It is up to the teacher though to make sure that the use of these technologies is used appropriately and not used to just waste time.
Work Cited
Anderson, S.W. (2009, October 9). Why Worlde? [Blog message]. Retrieved from
http://techlearning.com/blogs/24518
Cole, S. (2009, June 4). 25 ways to teach with twitter. Retrieved from Tech and Learning
website: http//techlearning.com/article/20896
