Walls Optional 2011

#OMGICantBelieveICameToTheTwitterSession

#MaybeThereIsStillRoomAtStansSession?

#TwitterIsTheMostRidiculousThingIveEverHeardOf

#OKMaybeThePhrasePresidentTrumpIsMoreRidiculous

#OMGWhatTheHeckIsAHashTag?

How many Twitter users?

What is Twitter?

What HEd faculty think of Twitter

2009 & 2010 Faculty Focus

"I have enough other ways to waste time, none of which are as silly as this one"

Just because students like to read skywriting messages from airplanes in the sky doesn't mean we have to shift our classroom instruction to the skywriting format. (I'm trying to draw an analogy here just in case you think I am so ignorant that I don't know that "twitter" is not skywriting.)

"It’s beneath my dignity"

"Students will lead us in this direction if they want to use the technology for learning."

35.2% vs 10.7%

...meanwhile...

Twitter + PLN???

#EdChat (http://edupln.ning.com/)

• February 2 to 8, 2010 (3,874 tweets)
• March 9-15, 2010 (3,241 tweets)
• May 18-24, 2010 (5,859 tweets)
• June 15 21, 2010 (5,878 tweets)

2,818 unique Twitter users

WARNING:

UNFINISHED

RESEARCH

1. Twitter allows participants to engage in sustained and consistent dialogue with their PLN, which deepens the relationship between the participant and their PLN.

2. Twitter provides a way for participants to tap into the collective knowledge of their PLN. This occurs in three ways; through the sharing and exchanging resources among the PLN, through “crowdsourcing” or soliciting answers or opinions to questions and ideas, and through collaborative projects. Often, other ICT tools are used in conjunction with Twitter to enable this.

3. Twitter expands the participants PLN membership through the use of hashtags, retweets, lists and conversation.

4. Twitter provides participants the ability to amplify and promote deeper thoughts and ideas to a large audience.

Twitter provides a way for participants to tap into the collective knowledge of their PLN. This occurs in three ways;

(1) through the sharing and exchanging of resources among the PLN,

(2) through “crowdsourcing” or soliciting answers or opinions to questions and ideas,

(3) as a tool to enable collaborative projects.

Often, other ICT tools are used in conjunction with Twitter to enable this.

"It’s like having my own peer review board that I’ve checked for every single link that I get from the network...you know it’s just not coming from from a bot like from Google. You know it’s coming from from people who actually recommend it."

Anna

"...my thing is, if I am going to retweet something, or if I’m going to put something out, I want it to be - I want to think about who could this help? Someone? Could this be beneficial?"

Kris

http://tweetedtimes.com/#/clintlalonde

"And I distinctly remember another affordance and that was getting very timely feedback on a nascent idea, so I think I’d kick out a really random idea or something that was very much in its infancy and asking for information ... and right away getting some responses to that...And for better or worse, independent of the quality of those responses, I could get some responses really quickly."

RJ

"I recently applied for a grant to a large national government sponsored organization. And in that grant I’m creating some curricular materials for a secondary classroom...and I needed letters of support from teachers. And it would look really good to have letters of support from throughout the country. So I actually created a Google form and sent it out to Twitter several times...and asked people to sign up...we ended up with 46 total teachers and I think about 30 of them were from Twitter. And it gave us 14 different states from throughout the United States."

Robin

"The conference kind of evolved from a conversation that was happening on Twitter one night...and I said why don’t we take that model (EdCamp) and use that for new teachers and bringing new teachers into the fold and exchanging best practices and everyone said hey that’s a great idea and it kind of just started up...We had our conference in on July 26th that same summer. And we had over 80 people attend from Florida, New York, Mississippi, Minnesota, Kansas City - people come from all over... I hardly did any advertising and just promoted through Twitter and through that hashtag and enough people in the PLN kind of got wind of it and enough retweets and notoriety on Twitter it became viral and we’re having 2 this coming year."

Kris

#

The Pedagogy: Networked Learning

Hopefully the next 50 minutes answers some questions

"Learning in which computer and information technology is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners, between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources."

Lancaster University

Department of Educational Research

http://csalt.lancs.ac.uk/jisc/definition.htm

...but it's not students

...or maybe it is...

Faculty who use technology themselves are more likely to integrate it into their teaching and learning practice

Georgina & Olson (2007) Rakes, Fields & Cox (2006)

Walls Optional

I'm having a tasty breakfast of learning with a side of professional development!

Camosun College

May, 2011

ersonal

earning

etwork

"The PLN consists of relationships between individuals where the goal is enhancement of mutual learning....It is based on reciprocity and a level of trust that each party is actively seeking value-added information for the other."

Collaborative Learning: A Core Capability for Organizations in the New Economy. Dori Digenti (1999)

P

L

N

A network of people you connect with for the specifc purpose of learning

Building Your Own Personal Learning Network, Daniel R. Tobin (1998)

February 2, 2008

Photo credit: One Dollar 98 by Ken Mccown used under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license

Question:

What role does Twitter play in the development and maintainence of Personal Learning Networks among educators?

• Qualitative (Phenomenological)
• Non-probability sampling
• Educators, Twitter, PLN conceptual model

The Research

February 23, 2008

"the critical study of educational technology

seeks to address the use of digital technology in

terms of ‘state-of-the-actual’ as opposed to ‘state-of the-art’ questions"

Neil Selwyn (2010)

D'Arcy Norman, 2008http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/PLE+Diagrams#norman

• Size matters: Network effect
• Build slowly and organically
• Take time
• Be selective
• Be open
• Engage in conversations

Tips

Thanks!

clintlalonde.net/walls2011

Twitter: @clintlalonde

Full thesis will be published and available for comment on June 30th, 2011 at clintlalonde.net