Interesting article by Martin Ebner and Mandy Schiefner which I found by doing a Twitter search for eLearning. The nub of the article is that the “e” in eLearning will die as this form of learning becomes common place. Now I agree with the thrust of the article, and many of us in the eLearning field have commented on the fact that we didn’t talk about “overhead transparency learning” or “video learning”, so why do we continue to talk about eLearning? There will, I am sure, come a day when we stop talking about eLearning and just talk about learning. Or, heaven help us, along will come αLearning and θLearning and λLearning (the latter tailored for gay students perhaps). What I personally hope is that we will start concentrating on good pedagogy and how that transfers across media.
One bit where I didn’t agree with Martin and Mandy is where they talk about Prensky’s “digital natives”. At the recent DEANZ 2008 conference, one of the key note speakers, Michael Barbour, raised this in his presentation. Prensky’s book is not based on rigorous research, so why are academics quoting it? In Prensky’s world I’m not a digital native (I’m a baby boomer, if you want labels) but I know my skills are far superior to most supposed digital natives. My observations (again not research) point to a user who tries most technology without trepidation, but only learns the bits they need. Surface learners if you will. Or WIIFM (what’s in it for me).
That said the article is well worth a read. And I must put this eLearning Twitter Search into my RSS reader. After all 1st go brought me something useful 
[ad]
Based on a list by Chris Brogan – 50 ideas for using Twitter in Business
First Steps
- Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, the name of your school/college/poly/uni, and words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
- Add a picture of yourself. People want to see you. What type of picture – up to you, there is a whole load of diversity out there on this.
- Don’t just tweet about yourself, talk to other people about their interests, too.
- Point out interesting things happening in your classroom (whatever form that takes).
- Share links to neat things in your institution and/or community.
- Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead.
- Be wary of always promoting your stuff. Your fans (aka mother) will love it. But hopefully you are reaching out to others as well.
- Promote your students’ stories, but be careful to maintain anonymity, particularly with kids.
- Be human.
- Talk about non-education stuff too, there is life outside your institution.
Ideas About WHAT to Tweet
- Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
- Have more than one twitterer at your institution. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
- When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
- Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
- Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
- Tweet about other people’s stuff. Make you human
- When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
- Share the human side of your institution. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
- Don’t toot your own horn too much.
- Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.
Some Sanity For You
- You don’t have to read every tweet. Some people follow thousands so they can’t be reading everything
- You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).
- Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation.
- Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.
- 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter. I use the TwitterFox add in for Firefox and Seesmic Desktop.
- If you tweet all day you will not be popular with your colleagues or your boss.
- If you tweet all day your students will let you know their displeasure. (see 24)
- Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
- If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.
- Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.
The Negatives People Will Throw At You
- Twitter takes up time.
- Twitter takes you away from teaching.
- Without a strategy, it’s just typing.
- There are other ways to do this.
- It doesn’t replace face-to-face (who said it does).
- Twitter is buggy and not education-ready.
- Twitter is just for nerds not for teachers.
- Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)
- Twitter doesn’t replace email.
- Twitter opens the institution up to more criticism and griping.
Some Positives to Throw Back
- Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).
- Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.
- Twitter can help direct student’s attention to good things.
- Twitter in the classroom helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
- Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).
- Twitter gives institutions a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?
- Twitter brings great minds together, and gives everyone daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).
- Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.
- Twitter helps with staff development, find other teachers.
- Twitter can augment parent feedback.
What else would you add? How are you using Twitter for your school/college/poly/uni?
Technorati Tags:
twitter,
education
