Course:ETEC511/511HETTwitter
ETEC 511 History of Educational Technology: Discourse Leadership:
Learning Module: Overview :: Audio - Paul & Petrina (2002) :: Reading #1 - Moody (1999) :: Reading #2 - Petrina (2004) :: Reading #3 - Petrina (2002) :: Wiki Activity :: Twitter BackChannel Discussion :: Conclusion
DLG Foundations: Learning Theory :: References
Created and Facilitated by: Rachel Bronk, Sharon Hann, Emily Jarvis, Aaron Mueller and Andrew Olson
Twitter BackChannel Discussion of the History of Educational Technology!
Ever wondered what all the fuss is about regarding the latest, greatest tech trend? Well now is your chance to try out Twitter and see what it is all about. The design of this activity was sparked by a great experience having some ‘twittering’ going on at a recent conference for online educators in BC, the Virtual School Society Annual Conference.
During the conference, and its many workshops, participants were encouraged to ‘tweet’ their thoughts in real-time to a Twitter Channel, which everyone could monitor, effectively creating a “backchannel” discussion that was not disruptive to the speaker in the room, but allowed participants to share ideas, links, thoughts and reflections. I am hoping we can duplicate this experience this week with all of you “tweeting” your thoughts and ideas while reading the different articles for this weeks topic. My hope is that each of you will take this opportunity to setup a twitter account, connect and ‘follow’ each other and also monitor the backchannel discussion of your classmates! So, how do you do all this? Well, here are the instructions!
How to Setup a Twitter Account:
First step, sign up for an account!
I would recommend creating an account with a name that is recognizable, not some cryptic series of letters and numbers, so that other participants can respond and connect with each other.
If you want to follow someone right away, you can do a search for “aaronmueller” and follow my twitter feed. I also recommend following “UBCMET” as David Roy is also using twitter to convey information to the students in the MET program.
Ok, now I have an account, and are following a few people, what next?
Step Two: TWEET!
Your next task is to start “tweeting” your thoughts, ideas, reflections and any links or other interesting additions to the conversation! One important aspect of ‘tweeting’ however is to add a special word at the end of your tweet identifying it to the ETEC511 History of Education Backchannel. For the rest of the class to find your “tweets” you need to add this word at the end of your tweets: #ETEC511HOE
What this does is “tag” your tweet to a special Backchannel that everyone can subscribe too, effectively collecting and organizing all our tweets together in one place. If you want a shortcut to this special “backchannel” you can use this link:
Need a little help on how to use Twitter? Check out this helpful video:
http://help.twitter.com/portal
It has extra information on how to find new people, how to send direct messages to just one person, or how to setup your own backchannel.
Just remember that you can only send messages of 140 characters (minus the 11 characters at the end of your message reserved for #ETEC511HOE) Without this important ‘tag’ at the end of your Tweet, then your message will be lost and not included in our backchannel discussion.
Good luck and enjoy! If you need any assistance, please feel free to email me with in the classroom. My name is Aaron Mueller.