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.