My classmates have very interesting outlooks on Twitter. It seems like most of us don’t use Twitter on the regular but just like me, they can see the potential behind it. Some classmates commented about the immediate news updates and “expansive community.” Some one mentioned the uses in education such as a “class chat box” and keeping up to date with new teaching strategies and curriculum. A couple of interesting this that I didn’t know about was the benefit to enabling location on Twitter to receive more relevant and local news and updates, business and trading trends, and the analytics to how many tweets are posted in different languages. This “echo chamber” of communication has its pros and cons of accountability, privacy, and validity however, its may be a source of speedy information, perhaps about the Hawaii Missile Crisis.
Reading about everyone’s perspective on the advantages and disadvantages makes me wonder if any of us will 1) use it from now on and 2) use it as an education tool. Currently, in my 611 Action Research project is about hypothetically utilizing Twitter to increase engagement through discussion about current events and politics in a high school class. I say hypothetical because we’re only learning about how to create an action research and will not actually implement it. If this is done correctly, I think this would encourage student to care about current events and issues and also voice out their opinions, back up their perspective with experience and research, and understand how to look at the opposite side. My concerns are obviously privacy and the possibility of causing heated debate and conflict, which in this day and age, is quite possible.
Learning with Emerging Tech: Critical Trends 