20 reasons to use Twitter in adult learning
February 10, 2013 5 Comments
It’s famous for starting revolutions and keeping Sally Bercow busy but what can Twitter do to supplement and enrich adult education?
Twitter is best used alongside more deep and detailed consideration of learning and professionalism. It can be too superficial, random and addictive if we use it unthinkingly but it can also be informative and valuable. The rise of the Heads’ Roundtable shows its power to bring people together quickly around educational matters. (See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/feb/04/ebc-headteachers-on-twitter-baccalaureate)
Here’s a list of 20 benefits of Twitter for students and educators.
1. Useful addition to Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) for students and educators to support continuing development
2. Is democratic with no hierarchies
3. Is inexpensive and flexible
4. Offers intellectual freedom with self-selected and user-generated content
5. Provides customised content based on people you choose to follow
6. Can raise public awareness of educational and linked campaigns
7. Enables students to follow specialists, experts and historical figures
8. Can make international connections, enabling learning from different countries’ approaches to education
9. Supports online communities of practice, with links to longer articles, blogs. videos and other resources
10. Hashtags give access to selected subjects or conversations
11. Provides immediate reporting of current affairs and policy updates
12. Provides a virtual common room for students, tutors and researchers
13. Supports networking without conference fees
14. Provides a forum for multi-agency connections around specific issues
15. Creates alliances between people and organisations
16. Is ready when you are to dip in and out of
17. Encourages new ideas and different perspectives
18. Shows citizen journalism in action
19. Enables communication of messages about course updates
20. Has wide appeal to tech-savvy students, staff and volunteers and is comparatively easy to learn
Do you agree with the list? Are there more benefits?
Do you think it’s over-hyped or a waste of time?
What about digital exclusion?
About Ann Walker
Lifelong Learning Matters 
Another thought provoking post Ann.
Digital platforms always provoke debate – do they create opportunities or do they exclude people? They are probably most effective where they can be integrated as part of broader engagement as is the case with the WEA. Twitter provides another opportunity and yet is not the only way of achieving similar outcomes. Love it or hate it, twitter (and its counterparts) are probably here to stay, so if the WEA can use it productively to engage and communicate then ultimately the organisation and the students ultimately benefit. It will always be a complimentary technology rather than a replacement for alternative and more traditional forums.
Thanks for taking the time to reply Sarah. Good analysis of where we are.
Great write up, again, Ann.
Key things that you allude to in your write up, that I’ve found incredibly beneficial from Twitter :-
– Learning of stuff before it hits the mainstream media, sometimes I also hear stuff on twitter that never gets big enough to hit the mainstream media, but is still very interesting i.e. Who hears of TED talks http://www.ted.com/talks in the mainstream media and yet they are incredibly insightful and incredibly educational.
– Having an insight into the thoughts and learnings of very respected and sucessful individuals, I was sign posted recently to the book “Mandela’s Way” by a tweet from Richard Branson, prior to this I knew little of Mandela and his idea’s, now, as with the benefit of many books, I am far richer in the knowledge of this great and increible individual and personally wasn’t aware of the extent of his incredible journey.
– Developing connections that could NEVER happen in the real world ! I tweeted about the Pitmen painter’s comming to my local theatre, from this I got an insightful and useful response from an idividual about the presentation, I asked the individual what their connection was with the Ashington group, I got the following response ! – “I am acting as trustee for the group, it’s voluntary and mostly about managing royalties.” – purely incredible and rarely occurs in the real world !
If your reading this and don’t understand what Twitter is all about, the following is a write up I created for the DAIN WEA project a little while ago :-
And if you use Twitter, you’ll find the following tools incredibly useful :-
http://allmytweets.net Literally shows you a list of everything you’ve ever posted on Twitter
http://snapbird.org Search someone’s twitter timeline for a specific phrase
http://twitlonger.com When you just have to break the rules and can’t stay to 140 characters
Thanks for sharing your experience Steve and for giving some practical examples of how Twitter works for you.
Thanks for the links too. I hadn’t come across http://allmytweets.net and http://snapbird.org.
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