Learning Technologies: Tweeting in a High School Social Studies Class

Abstract

One of the most effective ways to affect and facilitate changes needed in K-12 education is the use of technology. Successful implementation of technology in classrooms will benefit students and teachers in fully st understanding 21 century skills needed to teach and learn with technology, (Raible, Kirkley, & Chen, 2009; Bos & Lee, 2010). As various Web 2.0 tools are integrated in K-12 st education to address the needs of 21 century learners a new micro blogging social networking tool utilizing 140 characters or less, tweets or messages, is fast becoming a pedagogical tool at all levels of education. Twitter allows users to broadcast and receive tweets or messages. Research show that Twitter grew 6 times faster than Facebook, the worldwide largest social networking platform and continues to outpace Facebook in growth worldwide, (Nielsen, 2009). This growth means that digital natives, especially high school students, are more likely to use Twitter as part of their social network platform. As educators design instructions to find students where they socially "hang out" Twitter as one of the fastest growing Web By st 2.0 is an ideal platform to reach and engage 21 century learners.

Use of Twitter across educational settings: a review of the literature

“…A benefit of integrating Twitter into the learning environment, especially in the classroom, is the sense of community it facilitates by supporting active collaboration and opportunities to communicate and share information inside and outside of the classroom (Becker & Bishop, 2016;Booth, 2015;Bull & Adams, 2012;Carpenter & Krutka, 2015;Lomicka & Lord, 2012). Twitter allows students to connect with each other as well as interact with instructors and professionals, which leads to the creation of social and professional support networks (Anthony & Jewell, 2017;Camiel et al, 2014;Cho & Rangel, 2017;Visser et al, 2014).…”

“…Courses that include Twitter usage have been found to have a significantly stronger sense of a classroom community and comfort with peers than those without it (Clarke & Nelson, 2012;Rohr & Costello, 2015;Ross, Banow, & Yu, 2015;Smith & Tirumala, 2012;Wright et al, 2014). Participation in the community increased their engagement, and the meaningfulness of what the students were learning (Bull & Adams, 2012;Evans, 2014;West et al, 2015). The sense of community in the online environment also enhanced students' self-confidence.…”

“…Distraction, information overload, privacy, and limited space for expression were some of the frequently reported issues. With the overwhelming amount of tweets, it was difficult for the users to keep up with the relevant content (Bull & Adams, 2012;Cho & Rangel, 2017;Davis, 2015;Fox & Varadarajan, 2011;Gonzalez & Gadbury-Amyot, 2016;Lin et al, 2013). This paired with another major concern that Twitter was too much of a distraction in the classroom when it came to taking notes and participating in class discussions (Fox & Varadarajan, 2011;Mercier et al, 2015;Yakin & Tinmaz, 2013).…”

“…Most of the first-time users did not foresee the benefits of using Twitter for educational purposes. This negative perception was mostly related to higher learning curve that required effort and time to gain command over various syntactical features and communication style native to Twitter (Bull & Adams, 2012;Marr & DeWaele, 2015;Stephens & Gunther, 2016). Twitter was also seen as either too obtuse, or ineffective for formal discussion within the class, and unmanageable for larger classes (Jacquemin et al, 2014;Kassens, 2014).…”

“…Due to restricted space to convey ideas through a tweet, the complexity and depth of students' thoughts got confined, and placed an unfair burden on them (Bledsoe et al, 2014;Carpenter, 2015). According to Bull and Adams (2012), this tended to force content in an unoriginal, baseless direction. Finally, another concern raised by Mysko and Delgaty (2015) in terms of instruction and learning through Twitter is that it is difficult to judge the credibility of information and sources particularly for students, which is highly critical in educational context.…”