ICL Workshop  05

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How to Use Microblogging in Education

Carmen Holotescu, Gabriela Grosseck

Aims:

Microblogging is the Web2.0 technology with the most important impact in 2009, having applications in many domains, including education. On a microblogging platform, users can send and receive messages via the web, by SMS, instant messaging clients, and by third party applications; the most known platform is Twitter.
During the workshop, the participants will become familiar with a few microblogging platforms such as Twitter, Identi.ca, Yammer, Plurk, Edmodo, Shoutem, Cirip.eu, etc, and with their possible uses in education.
After the conference, those who are interested, will participate in a communities of practice hosted by Cirip.eu, a microblogging platform specially designed for education.

Content:

Possible uses of microblogging in education, which will be discussed:

1 Classroom community: Communication on microblogs enhances traditional courses, exploring the potential of microblogging in formal and informal settings: students discuss different kinds of asynchronous online discourse, considering voice, purpose, audience, to organize ideas, reflect, send notes, manage meet-ups, serendipitous discovery etc.

2 Exploring collaborative writing: Microblogging promotes writing as a fun activity, it fosters editing skills, develop literacy skills; it can give our students a chance to record their cognitive trails and then use them to reflect on their work.

3 Collaboration across schools, universities, countries: Pupils, students, teachers share their experience, learning socially.

4 Project Management: Groups are set up o Cirip.eu for projects working, notes can be picked up on cell phones, as SMS, and so is no need to be online in order to communicate with your colleagues.

5 A tool for assessing opinion, examining consensus, looking for outlying ideas, fostering interaction about a given topic.

6 A viable platform for metacognition (the practice of thinking about and reflecting on your learning) has been shown to benefit comprehension and retention.

7 Conference or as part of a conference or workshop: Dedicated groups provide a simple way for attendees at a conference to share thoughts, to publish and discuss presentations with others at the event and those unable to attend; they are also useful for further reflections.

8 Each user can build her/his Personal Learning Environment / Personal Learning Network (PLN), which contains – the last three for Cirip.eu:

· connections with the followed users,

· groups in which the user participates, on topics she/he is interested

· feeds provided by sites/blogs/social networks and search feeds on different topics,

· social networks which provide the multimedia objects embedded by platform.

9 Reference services (in libraries): People could monitor and communicate with dedicated accounts to learn about library events, new books, or get responses to library user questions.

10 Online courses: Entire online courses for formal and informal education are run on the Cirip.eu platform, using the private groups facilities:

· Announcements (Group News): the moderators can post notes and useful materials as SCORM/LOM objects for the group activities.

· The discussions on the proposed themes are realized through messages sent by the participants in the group space.

· Live video / audio messages, multimedia objects/presentations/files embedded in notes; they become part of the communication flow.

· Students learn how to find/use/create educational resources on the corresponding social networks. Their digital skills are improved, and their PLEs/PLNs are enlarged with these networks too.

Target group:

The workshop is addressed to teachers, trainers, who are interested in social learning, in using Web2.0 technologies in education.

The Presenters:

Carmen Holotescu, Manager TimSoft, Lecturer, Faculty of CS, Politehnica University Timisoara

Gabriela Grosseck, Senior lecturer Ph.D, Faculty of Sociology and Psychology, University of the West Timisoara