Reflection 1: using Twitter in learning and teaching

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Twitter is defined as a social networking and microblogging online service that allows users to send and receive text-based message or post of up to 140 characters called "tweets". Technopedia further explains that Twitter was designed by Jack Dorsey in March 2006.

Twitter has been a communication tool used by many for close to 12 years. Donald Trump has been a poster boy for Twitter. He has, to my opinion, made Twitter so popular.

Apart from using Facebook in my teaching. I have also worked on developing a way to introduce the use of Twitter into my learning and teaching strategy. I started by asking students to tweet about different topics related to our class discussion.

The screenshot below shows tweets by students on the Australian Sports Diplomacy Strategy 2015-2018. We talked about foreign policies and used the ASDS1518 as a case. We learnt how the PNG Hunters fit into the strategy, and the capacity building of different sporting codes in the country. 

Students were also asked to read and analyze articles online. After analyzing they were asked to tweet how this particular article is connected to the weekly topic.

We used hashtags in our tweets. Merriam-Webster defines hashtag as a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text (such as a tweet). Below is a screenshot of our classification.

They had to create a Twitter account before they were able to engage in the learning activity. I opted for Twitter initially because on the student network, Twitter is accessible compared to Facebook.

In my next post, I will show the use of Twitter gadgets and its inclusion in my Moodle unit webpages. Below is a screenshot of what I am referring to.

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