Category Archives: Twitter
Hashtag for higher education in Ireland #heie
Twitter has been the most effective, efficient, and cheapest professional development I have ever come across. However I am not going to use this post to introduce Twitter for professional development or its other potential uses in higher education – there are numerous other websites that have got there before me. However I do want to concentrate on the area of hashtags in twitter. For those not totally comfortable on the concept of hashtags please refer to the video below
As I mention in the video there are numerous education based hashtags that are well worth following. One of the tags top of my list would be #edchatie. This tag is used by educators throughout Ireland from primary right through to third level. Another good one along the same lines, but not used as extensively in my opinion would be #ictedu. Unfortunately one of the drawbacks of such popular tags with a widespread target audience is potentially a large amount of tweets may be not relevant to you. For example tweets with the #edchatie talking about parents involvements with schools is not relevant to third level educators, in a similar fashion #edhcatie tweets about CAO is not relevant to educators from primary level.
That said I still gain an awful lot from #edchatie tweets and I will continue to recommend them at every opportunity. Nevertheless as a “call to action” from this post I would like to suggest the creation of a specific hashtag for higher education in Ireland.
#heie
If you are involved in Irish higher education please use the hashtag #heie where appropriate
Twitter in Education
Free twitter badge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There have been numerous blog posts on
10 of the best of ….
and
50 ways to use ….
So I’ve decided to take a little bit of a different slant on things and produce a video of a slide montage on how twitter is used in all levels of education in Ireland.
I’ve also compiled a Prezi with some more information on Twitter containing a series of tutorial videos on how Twitter can be used in your teaching
http://prezi.com/hf9e3j08gfsm/twitter-in-he/
As with all of the materials available on this blog they are released under Creative Commons (CC by SA)
Related articles
- Top 14 Educational Technology Tweeters to Follow (educatorstechnology.com)
- We’ve come a long way, baby… (theredrocket.co.uk)
Embedding a twitter hashtag feed into your moodle site
Trying to get students to participate in moodle discussion forums can drive you up the wall.
There are a variety of techniques that you can use to encourage engagement in the forums but this post may provide an easier solution. There is an old saying (unfortunately I don’t know where it came from, “if you want to catch a fish, go where the fish are”. In this context I interpret that as if you want to get students talking to one another about your subject – go to where they talk. The most obvious place for todays students is through social media. This short video shows you how to embed a hashtag from twitter into your moodle page. So when they talk on twitter about your subject, using the hashtag that you provide, all of their comments on twitter are fed through into your moodle course
In this video you will see the twitter feed being placed as a HTML block on the side of the course. You can also insert the feed as a “label” in a section on the course – the choice is yours
Related articles
- What is Moodle? (enhancingteaching.com)
- Twitter in higher education (enhancingteaching.com)
Twitter in Higher Education
For the uninitiated, Twitter is a messaging service that limits you to 140 characters and spaces per post (or per tweet)
The advantage for a lecturer is that you don’t need to know the phone numbers of students to get messages onto their device: they are the ones who authorize their mobile phone from the website and they subscribe to your Twitter feed.er “tweet”).
Twitter is basically a potential alternative to email, instant messaging and discussion forums, as ways of communicating with students.
Students can also use this when doing their classwork, trying to understand the material. Tweet: “I don’t understand what this reading has to do with New Media? any ideas?” Other students then respond. (This actually happened recently in a class)
Students can follow someone else who is on Twitter, who interests them. For example if they are thinking about technology in education they can follow @topgold who works for LIT and Tweets about a range of topics including the use of technology in education
Twitter integrates with blogs and other Web pages, providing Flash and JavaScript code options that allow Web pages to access Twitter updates.
What are the downsides?
The most common criticism of Twitter is that it enables inane interaction. Tweets that say nothing more than “I’m eating pickles” or “Really tired today” are not uncommon, and, indeed, the value of such postings to the casual user is minimal. TO be honest I just don’t follow people who put up posts like this. However there even when you have an ideal set of people to follow, as an asynchronous broadcast service, there is no guarantee that any individual tweet will be read, let alone responded to.
The selection of video tutorials below are taken from YouTube and will help you to set up your twitter account. Click on the small box in the bottom left of the youtube screen to get the full list of youtube tutorials available through this list
For more information on Twitter please below a link to useful websites I have found on Twitter
Technology Enhanced Learning 