There has been quite a bit of discussion recently about the use of
Twitter as an educational tool. But it seems to me that the proponents
of classroom twittering have not fully thought out some of the
implications of its use in terms of either management or inclusion.
Just
in case you're not sure what Twitter is, it's an online application
that is a sort of cross between a chat facility and a blog. Its key
feature is that you are only allowed to type 140 characters at a time.
Some
educators have been exploring its use in the classroom, and for a
useful set of ideas and links to others thinking along the same lines,
I can do no better than point you to Darren Kuropatwa's post on
the subject. I think it would be fair to say that, at the moment, the
jury is still out on whether it is useful or not: I suspect that the
answer is that it could be useful sometimes.
However,
I'd like to explore some rather pragmatic issues about its use, based
on some of my own experimentation with Twitter, and on my and my wife's
knowledge about classroom and behaviour-related issues. I'd like to
take as my starting point this excerpt from a recent post by Darren:
Imagine a 20 minute lecture where all your students back channel about
what you're saying. Outside guests or experts are invited in. Someone
acts as a "rudder" to keep the conversation on track. The discussion is
displayed on a SMARTboard or with a projector. The chatcast is
immediately dumped into a wiki. The rest of the class is devoted to
reorganizing the wiki clarifying what was said, answering questions
(student to student as well as teacher to student; and don't forget the
people, students, teachers, mentors or parents beyond the glass walls
of the room) summarizing the big ideas, reframing the discussion in
terms of what needs to be explained again and where we're going next.
Imagine the possibilities ...
Sounds
exciting, doesn't it? Or nightmarish, depending on how you look at it.
I think it's a little of both. Here are my "issues" with this type of
approach.
- I am very good at multitasking. Actually, I am not very good at multitasking. What I actually do when I think
I'm multitasking is flit very rapidly from one thing to another. I know
that because every once in a while I flit at the wrong instant and miss
something pretty important, like a number. So I will hear something
like:
"... 1986..UK...increased...spending...educational... by...
percent."
I have read (please don't ask me where, except that it must
have been something like Scientific American) that this is, in fact,
what most people do when they think they are multitasking. So is having
all this twittering and skype-chatting going on in a lesson too
distracting? Or at least too distracting for some students? If you
think this is a non-issue, would you advocate the use of this sort of
approach whilst your students are bringing a liquid to boiling point,
or doing something with sulphuric acid, in a science lesson?
- If I,
a relatively healthy person, finds this sort of thing distracting, how
might someone with autism, or attention deficit disorder (ADHD), cope? If they
cannot, then you have set up a situation in which those students are
effectively excluded from the lesson, unless you are very careful to
ensure that nobody has to use Twitter etc in order to gain the same degree and kind of benefits as those who are using them. In other words, there has to be an effective and meaningful opt-out route.
- How
about the person suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome? I mention
this because one of the things that makes the condition worse is
stress, and I have read somewhere (probably the same article I referred
to earlier) that multitasking increases stress, as measured by various
biological indicators. If so, all this (hyper)activity would mitigate
against the achievement of one of the five outcomes of Every Child Matters, that of keeping children healthy.
- From
a teaching point of view, how do you know that the students have been
on task? The only way to truly know is to trawl through the "tweets"
and the Skype chat record afterwards. That's the only way you could use
this stuff for assessment purposes too. What a time-consuming task.
Let's suppose you're a speed-reader and can read all the text generated
in Skype and Twitter in, what shall we say? Five minutes? You have, let's suppose, 30
one hour lessons a week, which means it would take you 2.5 hours to
read through all of this. As far as I know, no teacher in the UK gets
that kind of time. So the only way to handle it would be to read it,
and make remarks to your class about it, on a randomly selected basis,
ie select just two or three classes to focus on each week.
- I
also have an issue about courtesy. I think students should listen to
what the teacher or lecturer is saying, not be chatting to their
friends. Like I have said before,
would that be acceptable in a theatre during a play? Or perhaps I am
revealing my own deficiencies here: I find it quite distracting when I
am talking to a class and they are hammering away at a keyboard. In
fact, typing while the teacher is talking goes against all the
good-behaviour advice that has been given since computers were invented!
- At
the end of the day, so what? While this experimentation is going on, we
are potentially wasting youngsters' time. We have a moral obligation to
do our best to measure the outcomes of these approaches (indeed, any approach). Does it improve grades? Does it increase interest in the subject? Does it ... well, you get the picture.
So,
am I saying that Darren and others like him should stop what they're
doing? No, of course not. But I do believe that the following needs to
happen:
1. Colleagues who advocate using such tools or
approaches in their classroom must be very open about what worked or
didn't, and why/why not. I know that Darren may be relied on to do just that,
and is well-respected as a result. It's important, because Darren et al
are the pioneers, and part of the work of a pioneer hacking through the
jungle is to lay down a path for others to follow, so that they, the followers, don't have to do any hacking.
2.
In order to address the sorts of issues I've raised, teachers should
consider implementing this approach on a pilot or trial basis, with a
selected group of students or a selected class, or any class at a particular point in the school year. For example, once all the
examinations are over, and lessons are not so "mission-critical", some
time could be devoted to this and other experimental activities. Or a
class that has excelled in the subject could be chosen, on the grounds
that a temporary deviation from the usual route is unlikely to adversely
affect their longer-term prospects. Or the opposite kind of class might be chosen, on
the grounds that if everything else has failed to raise its achievement
level, there's not a lot to lose. The point is, there has to be an end
in sight, a period of reflection and evaluation, and there has to be a
rationale for choosing the class you did.
3. There needs to be a
mix of the old and the new, both within each lesson and over the period
in question. It must be possible for students to achieve the intended
learning objectives of the lesson by alternative routes. Similarly,
there needs to be some lessons where the twittering etc doesn't go on,
at least until it has been proven to work.
4. The students
should be included in the evaluation of the approach -- this should go
without saying. But outside the confines of the subject itself, there
should be a discussion on when it is or is not acceptable to engage in
parallel activity via an electronic advice. You cannot assume that
students will be able to figure out for themselves that using a keyboard or cell phone is not
acceptable in all circumstances: I mentioned the theatre earlier. There
is also the job interview. There is also the after-dinner speech. We
are training children for life, not just proficiency in our subject.
Although
you may not have guessed it, I applaud such experimentation. I just
think that before we all get carried away in a euphoric cloud of our
own making, we should think of the practical, and even ethical,
ramifications of what we are doing.
What do you
think? Please leave a comment.
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