Kristine Brown



Kristine—I think you are on to something here. Yeah—this draft is a bit rough, but I can see the potential for an argument and even some ways for you to incorporate research on social networking to meet the assignment requirement for scholarly sources.

Introduction: You have a good opening sentence, but you need to revise the rest of the intro so that it takes into consideration your audience, many of whom may not know what Twitter is. People “hear” about Twitter, but that doesn’t mean they know what it does. Situate your reader, and then transition into a more specific discussion about Twitter and education.

Thesis: The thesis is taking shape, but you will need to be more assertive and specific in taking a stand. Right now, you claim that Twitter offers “incomparable advantages” to other pedagogical approaches. That’s a bold claim, so you would need to be very clear about what those advantages are and why Twitter is more adept at providing them than other technologies.

Narrow the focus: It may help to narrow the focus of what you believe Twitter can do. The use of specific examples is useful (novel writing, diction, backchannel classroom discussions), but what skills do these activities uses develop? Or, examine Twitter from the teacher’s point of view. What does Twitter allow a teacher to do that a blog or a discussion forum does not? What advantage does using Twitter give to a teacher?

Background Information/Research: The background information you have about Twitter is useful for the reader, and it’s appropriate to place that information immediately after the thesis (as you do now). It’s another issue of audience—situate your reader to the history (albeit brief) of Twitter so that you can move on to its uses in the classroom.

Scholarship: I like the connection you made to social networking because it’s an important one to make, plus there is extensive scholarship now on education and social networking. Try to get the most recent scholarship you can, and don’t ignore scholarly journals about teaching itself. Check for scholarship on blogging, the social networking activity that most closely resembles Twittering, and if nothing pans out there, broaden the scope to social networking in general.

Social networking is changing the way we learn as well as the way we work. People want to get connected to other people, and doing so through the Internet has increased our opportunity for doing so exponentially. What new aspect of social networking does Twitter add to the already marvelous suite of applications such as Facebook, YouTube, wikis, discussion forums, and blogs, that are currently used by educators?

I haven’t used Twitter yet in any of my classes, but I’m tempted to do so because I had such success using blogs in my semester-long 302 courses. Some of the best writing I’ve ever received from students (even my at-risk students) is in their blog posts. I see something similar in the discussion forum in our course, but it’s not quite the same, and I’m trying to figure out why. It’s not the grade—I graded the blogs, too.

There is something liberating about the less formal discourse in blogging and Twittering. The sense of audience is more real in social networking writing than it ever is for a formal paper. I also feel the brevity of the writing is a driver, as well as the ability to link to sources outside the post. Many of the students I teach cannot grasp the principles of academic writing, or at least it takes them several semesters to become competent at doing so. But blogging—no problem. Students pick up the characteristics of that genre in a heartbeat. Why does that happen?

Twitter, to me at least, places greater emphasis on status than blogging does. How many people are following your Tweets? It’s a bit self-indulgent, but then much of social networking is. Does this help spur learning?

I throw out these questions not to demand that you answer all of them but to give you a direction in terms of research and argument. You will need to develop an argument that claims Twitter has affected (positively or negatively, or a mixture of the two) the way teachers teach, the way students learn, or both, or you should argue that Twitter is changing a specific aspect of education, such as classroom pedagogy or parent/teacher communication. It’s actually easier to write a paper with a more narrowed focus, although it doesn’t seem so when you are starting out.

Perhaps it may help to keep in mind a teacher like me who wants to help her students become better writers, better researchers, and better overall thinkers. What recommendations would you make to me for using Twitter to accomplish these goals?

Kristine Brown

English 302-CH1

Dr. Matthews

July 30 2009

Tweeting Students to a Diploma

“What are you doing?” While it may seem an excessively simple question to base a website around, Twitter has established itself as the premiere micro-blogging outlet. In fact, Twitter’s success among the cyber community is broad, reaching, “millions of people around the world,” (“About Twitter”) who interact through, “the real-time short messaging service,” (“About Twitter”), often for more than just the status of a friend’s day. Twitter has demonstrated its ability to adapt and progress along with user’s needs, hence its movement from simply a cult-following of social whereabouts Tweeters to patrons that include the NY Times Online and President Barack Obama. Alas, Twitter’s prospects immeasurable at this point, advancing as the Tweeters request, while also trying to maintain the simplicity of 140-character posts. Interestingly enough, the character limit itself seems to have spawned a lot of interest in the site, some clients seeing the restriction as a challenge (“Tweet This”). The difficultly of publishing a meaningful post in less than the average person’s sentence is only one of Twitter’s pedagogical applications. Additionally, the educational relevance of Twitter can be seen across the academic spectrum; elementary and middle schoolteachers are finding just as much use for Twitter in the classroom as, say, a college professor who’s course is specifically devoted to Textual Media. From collective novel writing, to improving diction, to acting as a backchannel for classroom discussion, Twitter’s potential scholastic advantages far outweigh the popular critique that the site merely promotes mundane prattle of interest to no one. Twitter has, without debasing the original essence of the site, evolved into a host that can engage with the process of educating in a manner incomparable to other technological advancements.

Twitter is a status-based website where users post messages, pertaining to anything and everything, consisting of 140 characters or less. The site allows you to “follow” other users, and compiles a list of all the updates from all the users you follow on your account’s homepage. In fact, users can Twitter without ever visiting the site post sign-up, as the site interfaces with SMS (short messaging service, i.e. text messages) or other Twitter hosting clients such that updates can be sent and received from your cell phone. Twitter was born in March 2006 after it founder, Jack Dorsey, began entertaining the idea of a status-update based website (“About Twitter”). Dorsey has made a name for himself as the founder of Twitter, highlighted in BusinessWeek as one of “Tech’s Best Young Entrepreneurs” (“Tech’s Next Gen”) and MIT’s Technology Review as 2008’s Young Innovator (“Technology Review”). After it’s public release in August 2006, and subsequent incorporation in May 2007, Twitter has grown from a community of few to 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008, and more than 7 million as of April 2009, according to Nielsen Online (“Many Twitters”).

Growing interest in the site could be attributed to the explosive popularity of social networking sites in the past 10 years; those internet-savvy individuals always looking for the next-best way to interact via the world wide web. Whatever the initial reason for user’s interest, the subsequent use and criticism of the site has morphed it into a practical and productive way of communicating and finding other users with similar interests and concerns. By including features like, “Trending Topics,” Twitter has allowed for users to move from the constant complaint of, “randomly bragging about your unexceptional life,” (“Twouble with Tweeters”) to a source that compiles information and topics of interest of use to your life. Most specifically, Twitter allows users to “hashtag” keywords in their tweets, essentially this involves adding a hash mark (“#”) before keywords in your post such that they are then categorized and compiled on for users to browse by topic or subject matter. Additionally, Twitter has outlets for polling () on controversial issues, as well as hosts various experts, such as NASA and countless college professors.

Works Cited

Bianco, Jamie Skye. “Social Networking and Cloud Computing: Precarious Affordances for the ‘Prosumer’.”

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Igor Munteanu. “Moldova’s ‘Twitter Revolution’.”

“About Twitter.”

“Tweet This: It’s the year of Twitter.”

“Many Twitters are quick quitters: Study.”

“Tech’s Next Gen: The Best and the Brightest-Jack Dorsey.”

“Technology Review: TR35 2008 Young Innovator.”

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