I recently read this article about Twitter. The idea is that you (i) get a twitter account (free!), (ii) then sign up to “follow” the twitter postings (“tweets”) of various people. Those messages are then delivered straight to your phone or to your online twitter account (you choose). For instance, I am following this guy, with updates delivered to my online account.
We could use twitter for real-time updates about things going on in class, especially (i) homework assignments, and (ii) spontaneously self-assembling study groups. Check out this example. This is a bit like RSS technologies on the blog, but it’s actually a bit better: all the information is pushed directly to your mobile device. I can envision this being especially useful for the same sort of interactions that the Instant Study Groups category tries to facilitate.
One other thought: twitter could be used instead of clickers. See, you all get a twitter account, then I “follow” all of you. Then, we have a question in class, you send your response as an update to your twitter account via text message, and since I follow all of you I can check later to see how you responded. Cheaper than buying a clicker.
Anyone want to kick off discussion of this idea?
4 responses so far ↓
1 Philip // Mar 10, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Please forgive this criticism in the name of an honest response. I’m quite fond of the ideas, but I worry about the implementation.
A reminder of the homeworks would undoubtedly be convenient for some, but not all that useful for most of those who make use of the blog. The homeworks are posted directly to the blog (and to RSS feeds) and are easy to find. And right underneath of the problems, a usually valuable and helpful discussion of the homework problems ensues. Text messages, generally limited to about 160 characters in length and typed on small keypads, will not be able to easily duplicate the main benefits of the homework thread. Most students who are working on the homework will have found the problem numbers from the HW thread, and it can reasonably be assumed that their access to the blog is approximately as good as their access to a cellular phone, making the blog a better choice for assistance/reminders of the homework assignment for a given week.
The instant study groups concept has — measured solely by a count of posts in that thread — not been a great success. It’s hard to imagine it working any better or being used more frequently across another medium, especially considering the fact that only 60-75% of the class has a sufficient number of free messages (as estimated by the show of hands today).
Additionally, if this use of the service were to become popular, the prospect of being inundated with numerous text message requests for study groups or homework assistance isn’t particularly pleasant, especially if a string of replies continue to come through the phone during classes. I realize the Twitter subscription would be an opt-in program, but it seems that participating for either of the stated purposes could turn out to be unproductive, a duplication of efforts, or a minor annoyance.
As a final note, when the clickers were used in Chem 151, their implementation was time consuming and distracting, and only gave the instructors a general idea of whether students understood the given concept or not. In a course where homework is given regularly, and the class size is small enough to justify spending more time on individual questions, the downsides of the clicker (or text message responses) outweighs the potential benefits.
Anyways, that’s just one opinion. Hopefully others will chime in on the Twitter concept.
2 berger // Mar 12, 2008 at 10:49 am
These are all great points. I guess the general conclusion is that there’s not nearly enough support to try this on a broad scale in our class, so we won’t do it. I am sensitive to the idea of receiving literally 50 text messages a day related to class–nobody wants that. But a low-cost and ‘easy’ alternative to clickers was intriguing to me. ‘Nuff said (unless anyone else wants to throw in their two cents).
3 jrh3 // Mar 12, 2008 at 6:04 pm
i agree with philip on the CHEM 151 clicker deal. it was sort of tacked on, a way for a professor to get some sort of a response out of a huge class.
Also, the idea sounds neat, but I’m wary of of the idea not reaching everyone. I’m a big fan of the blog spot for class resources, and the Hibbeler page in addition to this has made the technological perks of the class even more useful. Even though i feel like the desicion has been passed, my opinion is to keep it to easily accesible options like the blog (or possibly some sort of chatroom/instant message tool for out-of-class discussion)
4 berger // Mar 20, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Well, I went ahead and set up a test Twitter case: check it out. Get an account and follow me if you like. I may occasionally tweet something useful…
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