Twittering+and+Teacher+Education

A CASE STUDY OF THE USE OF TWITTER IN TEACHER EDUCATION

**Case Title:** Twittering in teacher education: reflecting on practicum experiences by Noeline Wright in Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 25: 3, 259 — 265, 2010

This case study involved student teachers who were stationed throughout the nation of New Zealand in a variety of secondary school subjects as part of their diploma program to become certified teachers. The case was designed around the question, “Does microblogging help teacher education students develop self-reflective practices?” The participants had never used Twitter before, so no prejudice derived from past experiences would exist. Each student teacher was asked to post daily with answers to questions such as, “What did I learn today?”, “What do my students think about their learning experience right now?”, “What do I feel about what I’m learning now?”, etc. The Twitter account being used was closed so that only the study participants and the study developer could see the tweets being exchanged. The developer/moderator (Noeline Wright) would post her responses and her follow-up questions to student teacher posts. The case noted some education establishment attitudes about blogs and Twitter, such as that of P. McFedries, who stated that, “most people just don’t see the point, and others see it as a massive time-suck…(because) of the unremitting triviality of most people’s updates.” (McFederies, 2007) Another group of researchers were cited as touting how networking within an educational community is being harnessed via Twitter. The participants also followed up after completing the study to provide updates via Twitter to maintain a collaborative approach to the course of study as they completed their diploma requirements. The tweets posted during the study started as more content-focused and reflected feelings of the participants more than teaching or learning outcomes. As the study progressed, however, the tweets became more pedagogical and spoke of the participant-students’ experiences with the students in the classes they were teaching. The tweets from mobile devices showed a more feeling-related content as the tweeter was closer in time to the incident being shared, while the tweets posted from a computer were self-reflective. The moderator did not directly use the medium as a mode of instruction, but used the tweets as discussion points and also as follow-up to posts by the student teachers to encourage more self-reflection.
 * Case Description: **

This case showed a limited use of Twitter but the use to satisfy the research question was met. There could have been more use of Twitter in sharing instructional material. The use of Twitter to share experiences was important to give the learners (who in this case study were also teachers) a forum to exchange what may have worked with different groups of students, and how students of various learning styles responded to methods and strategies used, but little direct instruction was done through Twitter. The members of Group D believe that Twitter could be used effectively in education by teachers using short posts to pose questions related to material currently being studied and to explain concepts that may have not been grasped by the students. The nature of the posts can be beneficial in that it forces the user to get to the point and avoid lengthy discussion that may cloud the issue.
 * Case Evaluation: **

= References = = McFederies, P. (2007). Technically speaking: all a-Twitter. //IEEE Spectrum//, p. 10. = = =