Eye on Learning

Twitter, as they say, is a great socialising tool. It can also, believe me, used to promote a business, product, service and the like. As an educator, I usually try to find the use of such new tools to help enhance the learning environment. What if Twitter could be used to better engage the students in the learning process or to provide timely reminders, additional but useful resources for the course, etc? Read what Steve Wheeler has to say in his blog on as a lecturer, he has used Twitter with his students at: http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/01/teaching-with-twitter.html. Also, visit the links below his blog to see how other educators have used Twitter to benefit their students. For example, you may view the video by David Parry, a professor at the University of Texas, on how he's used Twitter in his courses. See also at: http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/video-teaching-with-twitter.html

Every day, you hear about a new tool that can do very interesting things for learning and teaching. It is, after all, the new world of e-learning and developing by leaps and bounds are numerous applications based on social networking, the basis for connectivist learning proposed by George Siemens and who have taken the world of education by storm since he introduced the concept in 2005 via his now well-read paper on connectivism at http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/networks.htm Based on the list compiled by Jane Hart a social media and learning consultant, the one tool that made it in the top 5 among both learners and learning professionals is Twitter. For the complete list (as of 10 May 2009), visit: http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/index.html . As Steve Dambo, an educator who maintains a blog entitled Teach 42: listed in a recent blog entry , what he's learned from the interactions in Twitter, it can be a great learning tool for the learning professional. The URL is htt...

Twitter is quickly gaining a huge following particularly in the last few months. It has surged to 10 million from 6 million (in early 2009). For more on how Twitter is influencing social media, read the report by Brian Solis at http://www.briansolis.com/2009/04/twitter-traffic-surges-to-10-million.html If you're keen to try out Twitter, guidebooks are aplenty. One recently released is available as a .pdf version. You may download it from: http://lindenamueller.com/blog/2009/05/trying-to-figure-out-twitter-try-our-free-ebook/ Happy twittering!

Since I first joined twitter more than eight or nine months ago, I have introduced Twitter to many Malaysians through my presentations in conferences, meetings, etc. I can recall only two friends, colleagues or acquaintances who are already on Twitter. Two others I know are politicians (the Malaysian PM and ex-Deputy PM). In short, Twitter is almost unknown. Facebook, Friendster and MySpace have a much larger following. The other friends, colleagues and acquaintances have facebook accounts or netvibes and never heard of Twitter. Today, however, the Sunday Star papers highlighted Twitter. Read it at http://tinyurl.com/cp5d3t . I expect more Malaysians will now be twittering. Personally, I love Twitter! As a microblogging tool, I can quickly update, provide useful links for other twitterers and learn from those with the same interests as mine. You can use it as a learning tool, teaching tool and marketing tool. You can also set it as a community tool by activating the Twibes f...