Twitter Impact on Education

The rise in social media is having a significant impact on the discipline of education and its many related subfields such as history. The institution of higher education seems to be having a renaissance in student engagement with teachers who incorporate elements of social media tools. The recent article I read focused on the use of twitter as an agent to promote learning within classrooms in higher education. The researchers argued that Twitter has the ability  to sustain students interest in subject matters and create more active involvement in their own learning process.  According to this article, live tweeting can  help facilitate more concentrate efforts to listen  and pay closer attention to classroom subject matters and enhance  one’s ability to gather information. Teachers love this ability of Twitter because more student engagement  tend to lead to better discussions during class lectures,  besides it encourages students to become more receptive to information which tends to produces more positive educational  outcomes such as good grades for students.   Furthermore, the article  discussed that most teachers under utilize Twitter by placing too much emphasis of its usage as an effective tool for enhancing inclass room discussions.   Thus, the main argument within this article suggest one of the most effective usage of twitter is its ability to enhance active, informal out-side class learning.   Interesting to note when I read this article was the evolving terminology of Twitter and other social media tools use which seems at time pretty asinine. This article introduce me to the word “Twibes”,  which  is when a entire classes  forms  Twitter groups and spread information in real time”.

Twitter and other social media tools are here to stay. Intellectuals who are still asleep in the use of social media as a means to enhance traditional teaching methods will become dinosaurs as more students become aware of the linkage of these tools as means to increase learning and better their grades. As the author suggest one day  “…students will demand that faculty members communicate digitally, via instant messaging, Twitter and other technologies”. When that day arrives professors will either adapt or fall victims of the new paradigms in learning, that new social media tools such as twitter  are forcing on field of higher education.

 

Notes

Eva Kassens-Noor. Twitter as a teaching practice to enhance active and informal learning in higher education: The case of sustainable tweets. Active Learning in Higher Education 2012 13:9 . Access  October 18,2012http://ehis.ebscohost.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/eds/detail?sid=611bfb34-5caf-4eb7-a674-1b46461ec40b%40sessionmgr14&vid=3&hid=4.