TWITTER... Education? or Social Network?

Although some argue that young people already spend too much time using social media, other educators say it’s time to embrace tools like Twitter and use them to expand communication with students and develop innovative lessons.
Once primarily an outlet for celebrities to broadcast their latest escapades, Twitter has gone mainstream. The service is employed in business, advertising, personal communications and even education. Teachers at all grade levels are “tweeting” about using Twitter for connecting with students and parents as well as for intruction.Twitter is more useful than e-mail, because, although only about 50 percent of high school students have Internet access at home, about 90 percent have cell phones and can receive tweets that way.
Twitter also allows teachers to network with colleagues around the country. Teachers say that they can follow different education sites on Twitter, and post a question on Twitter nationally and got some good feedback from other education professional.

The main way educators have been using Twitter with students is to tweet the homework every day. Statement of an educator, Provenzano: “Students can see the homework posted on my Twitter account, which I have linked to my school Web site. Students who link their cell phones to my tweets receive a text message with the homework. My goal for using Twitter is to open another line of communication with students. The more available I can make myself to my students, the better the class can be.
“Another way I use it is for quick communication with students who have questions or other school-related ideas to share,” Provenzano continued. “Some like to share ideas they have about essays or other projects.”
Provenzano also has awarded extra credit to students who have sent him tweets related to a class assignment. “I once had a student send me a picture of Edgar Allen Poe's grave in Baltimore,” he said. “The student thought it would be cool since we had just covered his works in class. It was cool because I didn't ask the student to do it; but the student was thinking of the lessons outside of school and thought I would like the picture.”

Copyrights'

Copyright and the "fair use" doctrine are of special concern in education and research. Every day educators and scholars deal with the creation and communication of ideas and information embodied in copyrighted works. Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Copyright does not protect ideas, only their expression. In most jurisdictions copyright arises upon fixation and does not need to be registered. Copyright owners have the exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time, after which the work is said to enter the public domain . Uses covered under limitations and exceptions to copyright, such as fair use, do not require permission from the copyright owner. All other uses require permission. Copyright owners can license or permanently transfer or assign their exclusive rights to others.

Open Source at the Secondary Level

I think that this idea seem to extremely valid. In my classroom assessment class we often discussing validity and reliablity, and being able to measure the validity of what you teach. I feel that open sourcing is a great way to do so, because in the open source gradebooks the teacher has the ability to analyze each question on the test. And measure what the student doesn't understand. Open sourcing gives the teacher the ability to be more interactive with students one on one.

I also believe that open source can be a way of what we call "Going Green". It eliminates the paper pile up, and untilzes the net as a resource. I think that this a great tool, because these kinds of tools are already being used in the business world; open sourcing is preparing students to be able to collaborate on the net.

You see the letters ICT everywhere - particularly in education!

ICT is an acronym that stands for Information Communications Tecnology
However, apart from explaining an acronym, there is not a universally accepted defininition of ICT? Why? Because the concepts, methods and applications involved in ICT are constantly evolving on an almost daily basis. Its difficult to keep up with the changes - they happen so fast.
Lets focus on the three words behind ICT:
- INFORMATION
- COMMUNICATIONS
- TECHNOLOGY

Blog's In Education...

Hi Everyone.. This is my very first blog. Yay! Blogs provide a communication space that teachers can utilise with students whenever there is a curriculum need to develop writing, share ideas and reflect on work being undertaken in the classroom.