Twitter for teachers and learners

Before I read articles about twitters in classroom, I did not know that it could be a great tool to teach and learn. Also, I did not even know why people use twitter. However, articles from Joe Dale and Scott Akerson provided a good insight on how I could use twitter or microblogging for my own professional development and for my future students.  

Twitter allows students to interact with the other students in classrooms across the country so that students can learn from each other. Scott Akerson said that  twitter provides opportunities for connection, communication and collaboration to help the students’ learning experiences better and gives more motivation for students to prepare great presentation

For teachers, Joe Dale offers practical tips and advice on using twitter via video clips. The video clips explain how to use twitter for professional development. I have noticed that Twitter is a great tool to stay current with news and communication in general. It allows people to search for topics or people that might interest them in their field very easily. This is good for professional development because I can contact those who can give me good advice or search for information that will improve my teaching skills via twitter. 

Social Networking Group

This website shows that connecting to other people in order to learn the knowledge of the field in which is interested is important in learning in digital era. Technology allows people to have a community on internet website.

EFL Classroom 2.0 is community of many of English teachers and learners. It seems to be very useful to current teachers in EFL context or those who are planning to teach English in EFL context. People can get a lot of useful resources, materials, and ideas for their classroom through this website. Also, they can experience indirectly through many teachers who are having or had teaching experience in EFL context. In addition, through this web site, teachers can share ideas with other teachers and discuss teaching strategies or skills. Even for learners, they can get helpful materials for learning English as well.

Connectivism

Since human beings can no longer personally experience everything to learn what they need, they need to gain information from formed information. In George Siemens’ article, “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age“ he used Karen Stephenson’ statement “Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge. ‘I store my knowledge in my friends’ is an axiom for collecting knowledge through collecting people (undated).” Therefore, focusing on connecting to formed information allows learners to learn more from the other people who have the knowledge of their field that they need or want to learn, especially in a digital era.            
However, today, knowledge is growing exponentially and quickly. Therefore, in terms of learning in the theory of connectivism, the needed skills is to draw information outside of our primary knowledge through connection with techonology as well as to recognize whether information is important or not.  That is why educators help learners how to access to more important information. In addition, George Siemens on the video clip “The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature,“  he mentioned that "educators need to find a way to help learners to express their own ideas so that they are able to communicate with the other people." In digital era, as  a educator, it is important what to teach, but, at the same time, it is also important to teach how to learn from the other people through connection and use technology to assess to the people in the world.

Resources:

http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm
Siemens, G.  (2005, January).  Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.  International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, Retrieved November 20, 2005

The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature (4:13 minutes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTgWt4Uzr54&feature=PlayList&p=3E43054A8703F57A&index=2 Retrieved January 10, 2009.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectivism