You should never Tweet in class

After browsing few some of the articles about microblogging I became a bit torn on how to view the situation. On one hand, I was very impressed with the possibilities of digital storytelling and how it could be utilized to allow students to read and write in English class without having to stare mindlessly at a 30 lb textbook. Students compose in so many rich ways beyond traditional pen and paper essays that it becomes almost natural to invite digital literacy into the classroom. There are so many uses for microblogging in the classroom: tweeting in the voice of major characters for whatever text is being read, using tweets as a way to gather the class’ thoughts before a discussion, having students follow certain hash-tags or people in order to research a topic or argument. One thing that I like about Twitter is the character limit, this is extremely useful in the English classroom to help take away the intimidation factor that many struggling writers face. Short concise writing can be a way to get struggling writers comfortable expressing their thoughts and ideas through writing.

As much as I love learning about all of these educational tools and hope to incorporate them into my classroom, this article on academic tweeting addressed some concerns I have about all of this. I think there's a danger in taking all of these things that students enjoy, and learn from on their own, and making them "school". One way to avoid that is to not bombard students with these new things. During student teaching I made the assumption that of course all my students were using MySpace and Facebook and tried to incorporate them into a few of my lessons. This turned out to be false and some of the lessons fell a bit flat. As educators we have to consider why we are incorporating these things into our classrooms and make certain we are using them in meaningful and purposeful ways, not simply using them for the sake of using them. I would hope that we wouldn't teach a text just because "everybody was reading it" and we should be careful to approach technology the same way.

Students vs. Learners

The blog post that I found most interesting from my Google Reader endeavor was ARE THEY STUDENTS OR ARE THEY LEARNERS?. This article was written by David Warlick and comes from his blog 2 Cents Worth. This article focuses on the differences between students and learners and how as teachers we help to create the divide between the two. Students are treated almost as employees that are forced to come into our classrooms and "learn," while learners have a desire to learn new information on topics they are interested in. Warlick's argument is that by treating our students as capable "learners", and not lazy "students", we can begin to change the culture of our schools. Warlick argues that we need to, "teach in order to make ourselves obsolete." What he means by this is that we cannot spoon feed our students information and expect them not to be lazy and unmotivated to find new information on their own. Instead we must begin to place more and more responsibility back on the learner, in order to better motivate them. I thought that this was a great blog post for any classroom teacher to read, no matter their opinion on this issue.