The Internet sensation known as Twitter has several objectives. Twitter is a social network that allows users to make a post up to 140 characters about their daily lives, comments, and opinions. The website also allows users to follow other people whether it is family members, friends, celebrities, or just random people on the Internet and see the posts they decide to share. This social network is a good resource in the sense that it provides "opportunities for young people to write, read, and speak their worlds into existence" (Alvermann, 2008, p. 13). I have my own Twitter account and although I do not update all the time, this week I noticed that just because I do not post, does not mean that there are not several hundred posts that come up on my own feed from people I am currently following. I follow both celebrities and friends to keep up on the latest news, which means that for the most part, I take advantage of what the site has to offer in regard to social networks. Every time I reloaded my home page this week, it seemed that I had at least ten new tweets. Upon the end of the week, there were thousands of posts from what a person was doing, to where someone was going for the weekend, to celebrities promoting television shows, music, and movies. By the end of the week, I felt that I had some insight as to various topics that were occurring all around both the east and west coasts. As a result of these findings, it is safe to say that twitter definitely fits the category of a social network.
Twitter can be implemented in several classroom applications areas. A good quote found in chapter six of Richardson's text states, "more and more I see Twitter as an excellent resource for assessing several of the skills that are fundamental to learning and living such as: the ability to make mistakes and immediately get positive critical feedback [and] the ability to take part in a communal discussion" (Richardson, 2009, p/ 89). Students can use twitter to talk to one another via the website for various reasons, such as sharing personal interests, ideas from school, homework or research help, or even to communicate with one another, especially when someone has missed school. Students can also use twitter to follow other classes across the globe that might be studying the same topic in order to generate ideas. They could also follow celebrities' Twitter accounts and create a report based on their posts or even follow news/weather updates to report to the class. Teachers can use Twitter not only to do the same with their students, but also to inform parents/guardians of daily happenings, as well as networking in order to share ideas with other teachers not only inside of their school, but even outside of their school district or country. Richardson (2010), claimed, "Following other educators on Twitter creates a 'network at my fingertips' phenomenon where people ask questions and get answers, link to great blog posts or resources, or share ideas for projects as they go through the day" (p.86). Teachers can have students use Twitter to summarize what they learned throughout any given school day. They can also use Twitter to allow students to take a vote about certain topics, such as what book they would like to read next in class or even which type of field trip they would like to go on. An activity I would even like to try that I read about which teachers have completed is creating a story using twitter. Students would work together and one by one post a piece of a story. Everyone must contribute to at least one part of the story. This process would continue until the story is complete.
The first literacy that is involved when using Twitter is to set up an account. There are several steps a person must complete in order to make an account, such as creating a username and password. The second literacy that is involved is to learn all of the website's functions such as learning: how to follow someone, all of the symbols such as hashtags, how to retweet a post, and how to reply to a tweet. An important literacy that is utilized through Twitter surrounds when to retweet a post. Users must be able to read and determine if a tweet is important enough to retweet or respond to. A retweet is important because you would be sharing information to people who follow you that might not be following the original poster. This can not only inform people of certain ideas or events, but can also lead to networking, as your followers can end up following the person who originally posted the tweet if they are not already doing so if they like their tweets. All of these aspects fall into understanding how to navigate through the system. A person also must be able to send a message under 140 characters, therefore, users must learn proper word choice in order to get their message across using the minimal amount of space they have.
Technology is used to transform teaching and learning because twitter allows for an open forum. Similar to blogs, it gives a voice to students who might have something important to share, but they are afraid or unwilling to do so while in school. Twitter provides these students with an opportunity to express their ideas. Twitter also allows teachers to see what their students are like outside of the classroom. Through twitter, teachers might be able to see each of their students' interests, which they can use to tie their interests into the curriculum in order to engage the students. By allowing the students to vote on certain topics through Twitter, it allows students to not only have a voice, but an opinion as well in regard to their education, allowing them to not only take on more responsibilities, but care about their education. As a result, students are more likely to value their education.
