Twitter

Twitter is a website that allows for short messages and status updates. It is intended to allow people to stay in contact and updated on the smaller day to day activities of their friends, family and collegues. Twitter allows for people to communicate in 'real time' and know what the people they know are doing at that very moment. They can then comment and communicate with others, which can be helpful for a number of reasons.

Within a classroom, Twitter could be used to assist with classroom discussion regarding various issues, assignments or topics. For example, if this was set up within a classroom, students could access their page from home and communicate with people within their class, this could help with assignments, homework or anything else related within the class.

It could also be used to provide another method of communication between teachers, students and parents. This school http://twitter.com/leamore_primary is an example of a school that is using the Twitter website to assist with student, parent and teacher communication.

There are a number of limitations with Twitter however, this includes the limitation on words allowed per post, it can be difficult to follow or add friends to your twitter page. Twitter can also be distracting and encourage off task behaviours. Much of the information that comes up with the search engine provided on twitter requires students to be critical consumers as the information that comes up is often misleading or false.

However using Twitter in a classroom can also be engaging for students as they feel as though they are using relevant technology that can be both fun and engaginig due to being able to communicate with other students.

Whilst teachers are able to monitor the students by 'protecting' their tweets (activiating privacy settings) the protection available is limited which requires teacher to have a high level of trust in their students, and may also result in parents being reluctant to allow their children to use this innovation.

Overall, I think that whilst this application could be used within the classroom, the need for critical consumerism on behalf of the students, as well as the risks with privacy mean that this is a risky innovation to incorporate, and one which I would only incorporate as a means of communication between parents and students.

Scratch

Scratch is an innovation that allows students to create games and animations. This program allows students to program they're own games and animations. This can then be incorporated into classrooms to assist students with learning a variety of subjects.

This is a simple Scratch Animation that I created:




There are a number of pro's and con's regarding this innovation.
The pro's include it being relevant to a large majority of students interests, this application is fun and will engage students. Animations can be done by students or prepared by teachers.
The con's regarding this innovation include that it is time consuming, the help available is limited to certain areas of the program which could result in lessons being to long to be realistically implemented within a classroom. As well as this, students who are not regularly using computers or who are not interested in using computers or technology such as this may find this too difficult or not become engaged. This could result in students not benefiting from the lesson.

In my opinion, Scratch is best used in a classroom when games or animations are pre prepared by the teacher and implemented as an aid or resource within a lesson. Scratch games and animations can be used on a SMARTboard which would again engage students and assist in making the application usable for the whole class.