Learning Twitter

[Leonie]

I’ve chosen using Twitter, because it’s something I’ve learnt quite recently, and illustrates how different types of learning spread over many months contributed to my current abilities, understanding, attitudes & identity.

I’m linking this back to the categories suggested, but also giving motivation more prominence because I feel what you learn is more closely bound to why you learn it than the model allows. And I’ve tried to bring in social motivations & outcomes more too.

a) I learnt that Twitter existed (Ia) because people were talking about it (ie thru social interactions) but felt confused about what it was and what the point of it was (negative feelings & low motivation iv)

b) I set up an account a few years ago and followed whatever caught my interest. (III? – situated action?) I was probably motivated just to ‘keep up’ with something other people were talking about. For a week or so I really enjoyed it (emotional change IV) & spent a lot of time following various links, then realised it was wasting hours of my life, so lost motivation.

c) I was motivated to try again from reading accounts by educational technology professionals about how helpful it is to them – so I guess that was imitating others in order to gain entry to a community of practice, & to the actual info being shared. I set up a new account last summer, which I use just to follow learning tech. So then my motivation was stronger & my aims more focused. Also, I felt ‘safer’ with a semi-anonymous identity. I learnt a little about the practice & culture of twitter through observation, but still had negative feelings about saying anything myself.

d) I reflected a lot on my feelings about Twitter (IV) & compared it to Facebook as part of one of my Masters assignments – developing my conceptual understanding (Ib) and pledged to try to use it actively (III)

e) My first practical attempts failed to get any feedback because my account was protected! But gradually my actions were reinforced through occasional acknowledgements from other people (III? practice). There’s only a bit of jargon to pick up (Ia) but quite a bit of know how (IIb) in when to post, how to provoke interaction, how to be brief!, which app works best for different uses – judgements that may seem instinctive to seasoned tweeters. I found the skill of live tweeting at conferences particularly challenging, but I’ve noticed myself thinking differently during talks: looking out for soundbites or key take-aways more, even when not tweeting. So use of a technological tool (in a particular cultural way) is influencing my cognitive processes in some situations.

f) I’m now confident enough to explain the benefits and jargon of Twitter to friends – that’s a tiny shift in my social identity. It’s also helping me shift my professional identity and take small steps into a new Community of Practice, both through direct interactions and shared awareness of hot topics.

g) But I’m aware there’s plenty I don’t know – numerous ways of analysing twitter data, tools such as Storify to capture Tweets, sophisticated strategies for tweeting & examples of using it in education…(combination of I & II)

[Anna Warren]

There’s a lot here that’s giving me pause for thought Leonie! Not least your experience of the lack of feedback due to a protected account – it’s a reminder really that we need to be mindful about how important feedback, and more to the point, timely feedback is in supporting and motivating learners!

I’m inclined to agree with you about some of the limitations of the model – is there another model that you think would work better here?

Anna

[Leonie]

Hi Anna. Thank you for the motivating feedback 😉

It’s not a bad model – there’s so many aspects to learning that either models ignore something or are too complicated to be useful. I’ve not yet found one that encompasses everything I would find it useful to hold in mind about learning. I did find Knud Illeris’ framework useful and will try to summarise it properly on a new thread if I’ve got time this weekend.

What I do find really helpful at the most basic level is to consider:

1. Outcomes – what is learnt? Ie what changed? And the suggested model covered that pretty well, weighted towards the cognitive outcomes tho.

2. Processes – how was it learnt? Both in terms of cognitive processes and interactions with people/tools/media etc. The activity asked us to think about that too, but the model didn’t really cover it.

3. Driving factors – basically motivation to put the effort in: aims, value of outcomes, confidence/self-efficacy

4. Constricting factors – I’ve not really spent much time understanding this, but I’m thinking of any type of barriers, & traits or states that affect learning  – not sure where there’s evidence here, or just pop science, e.g. learning styles etc.

I imagine 3 & 4 were covered in wk2, but I skipped straight to wk3 so that I might be thinking about things at the same time as others!

I’m not sure exactly what influenced the above. Certainly Illeris (2007) How we learn. Probably Alan Rogers (2002) Teaching Adults 3e too

Have a good weekend,

L

 

[Anna Warren]

Thanks for those suggestions, Leonie – I’ll definitely look those up 🙂

I have been reflecting on your Twitter experience over the last couple of days as it definitely resonated for me (and made me feel surprisingly relieved that someone else had those experiences!). It has spurred me on to have another concerted go with it, rather than be a serial “retweeter”! I’m at a day conference soon so I think I need to bite the bullet and give it a go 🙂

Anna

[Leonie]

Hi Anna

Using twitter at a conference is one of the most useful things about it so far (if lots of people are using it) – checking the stream of tweets as the presenter’s speaking was like listening into  lunchtime conversations that I might never have heard otherwise as I didn’t know those people.  But trying to do 4 things at once (listen to speaker, read tweets, take personal notes & formulate tweets) was just impossible for me! I think I could just about handle 2 at a time! Good luck!

Also, having just watched Helen Beetham’s week 2 webinar, I think her developing literacies model actually describes my learning outcomes well. I can’t figure out how to paste in the model, but it’s on slide 26 http://www.slideshare.net/hbeetham/oc-tel-mooc-week-2

 

[Jillian Pawlyn]

Hi Leonie and Anne,

I have enjoyed reading your expereinces with Twitter, I had composed my response by have had problems with posting to this page. This is my final attempt to post.

My contribution, http://jillianpawlynoctel.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/what-is-learning.html

 

[Jillian Pawlyn]

Hooray, it worked. Oops in haste I didn’t notice the spelling mistake. Experiences 🙂

 

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