A high-school history teacher has his students “tweet” about pertinent course concepts. A second-grade teacher uses Twitter to help her students learn how to communicate. Educators across the country are trying to incorporate social technology into their pedagogical practice – but can anyone say with certainty that social technology actually helps kids learn? Does writing a “tweet” (a Twitter message, written in 140 characters or less) really sharpen a student’s comprehension and analytical abilities – or does it divert the student from more significant ways of learning?
A recent Education Week article looks into the issue, and while the piece draws no firm conclusion, it does provide an interesting look at the evolving use of social technology in the classroom.
On the one hand, you have teachers who see tools like Twitter as aids to “collaborative” learning. History teacher Lucas Ames, for example, notes that his Twitter assignments are “getting kids who aren’t necessarily engaged in class engaged in some sort of conversation.” And second-grade teacher Dorie Glynn, whose students use Twitter for activities like playing “a virtual I Spy game in which they hunt for geometric shapes in maps and photos sent from Twitter followers in other places” also sees Twitter in a positive light: “I see a huge amount of potential for connecting with another classroom, asking regional questions, comparing and contrasting areas.”
On the other hand, the Ed Week piece cites a recent study showing that even adults who try to multitask using different media have “difficulty processing the information or switching between tasks.” Some critics of Twitter in the classroom, the article suggests, feel that if adults find “collaborative” tools to be distracting, how can the same tools help students learn? .
This piece is truly a useful read for parents and educators, who may find sobering (or frustrating) this concluding comment from UVA psychology professor Daniel T. Willingham: “The medium is not enough…People talk about the vital importance of Web 2.0 and 3.0, and that kids have got to acquire those skills. But we can’t all just be contributing to wikis and tweeting each other. Somebody’s got to create something worth tweeting.”
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