Social network has allowed an individual to have access to the world and interactions can be made easier through chatting and messaging. There are many social networks in the world today but in this particular context we are majoring on “twitter” and how it has helped to create interactive lessons in the classroom (“The Twitter Experiment” 1). The essays in the New York Times and the twitter experiment have a similar theme i.e. how social network can enhance interaction in a class setup (Freeman 35-37).
One similarity between the essay and the YouTube link is the use of the same social network, “twitter” (Scott 45-52). It is a social network that allows users to blog posts with a limit of 140 characters. To log in to twitter, one needs an email address and they acquire a user name for interaction. You can have as many followers as you want. In relation to education, students are able to make their posts and their views are seen by the whole class (“The Twitter Experiment” 1).
Justin Lansink illustrated in the essay has the fear of speaking out in class while David Petty, a freshman in the study of political science in the University of Texas Dallas says that one does not have to worry about speaking to a multitude of people in the class (Martin 2010). This shows that the fear to make your point across in class can be countered by the availability of social network. Not every individual has the capacity to speak up because of fear of being put down or saying the wrong thing.
Posting on the screen builds up the confidence of students to be interactive (Wellman 1-12). In terms of analysis, this similarity is significant in terms of helping to understand the necessity of social networks in the current society. Apart from helping to provide and spread information quickly, social networks aid in promotion of healthy relationships in the society thereby enhancing harmony amongst people.
In both materials, teachers are using twitter in schools to set up “backchannels” in their classrooms. The teacher’s computer is connected to a projector and reflected on the white screen. This allows the questions, posts, answers and commentary to be visible by everyone in the class. This is made possible through a live digital streaming and the student’s response is relative to the class discussion (Hansen 75).
In the video clip, David Schallert a History student in the University of Texas Dallas voices out that in a classroom of fifty students it is hard to get your opinion out. Through the help of twitter, an additional number of student can get there comments piped up and be heard like anyone else (“The Twitter Experiment” 1). The same point can be seen in the magazine whereby Nicholas Provenzano, an English teacher at Grosse Pointe South High School which is outside Detroit, illustrates that out of thirty students; only twelve can engage in a conversation and through backchannels an additional of eight are able to pipe up. He notes it is an improvement (Hansel 18-20).
Purdue University in Indiana developed their back channel system where students post their questions and answers that can be read on their laptops and smartphones and projected on a large screen (Brown 10). The same is seen in the University of Texas Dallas where student are sitting with their laptops while there is a large screen in front of them where their comments are displayed (“The Twitter Experiment” 1).
In this case, it can be noted that both materials indicate the importance of technology to the society in terms promotion of easy learning techniques. It is clear that both producers of the two materials were mainly suggesting to their audience the technology has helped the current society in terms of it has eliminated complex procedures. The audience, in both cases, can deduce that the use of technology has improved the lifestyle of mean in a great way.
Professor Chakravarty says that students are intimidated and could not speak up, while in the video, Dr. Monica Rankin says that he could not be able to pull out a discussion from students but now thanks to twitter, interactions is successful (Shishkin 16-19). The teacher-student relationship is made trust worthy by the response the teacher gets from the students. This gives the teacher moral to pass knowledge.
Kate weber mentioned in the magazine essay, convinces that students are not destructive rather they are quick to know things. Even Dr. Monica Rankin says that she thought it would be disastrous and messy to introduce this system but the response was encouraging. In both resources, it can be proved that social network in classrooms can work and enable effective learning environment (“The Twitter Experiment” 1).
By the comments from the elementary and University students there is a positive response towards this system (Freeman 54-60). In terms of analysis, this example shows the importance of technology in terms of enhancing education and other social activities that take place in life. It is clearly evident that most of the use of technology has created major changes in terms of creating a platform whereby individuals can easily communicate and resolve conflicts. These pieces of literary work demonstrate that technology can be useful in terms of improving education and processes of learning.
In conclusion, the innovation and introduction of devices has brought change in education. There are many who would think that by adding devices like laptops and smartphone in their classes, students will be more destructed. All people need is for their opinions to be heard and social networks like twitter have enabled students to get involved in classroom activities. Social networks act as ice breakers and this encourages interaction between them (Moody 103–127).
They are able to correct each other and learn what each and every one of them has to put across. People who are introverts no longer have to fear being called out to speak in public. It is in such platforms that one may have the right answer but because of fear they would rather keep it for themselves. Twitter has allowed everybody’s views to be displayed. It is also an advantage for teachers who have many students in class. It is impossible to get every bodies opinion in a crowd of one hundred people but twitter has a made it easy by enabling teachers to get as many response as possible in a short moment (McGrath and Krackhardt 223-242).
Works Cited
Brown, Amanda. “The tricky business of business tweeting.” The Irish Times. 2011: 10. Print.
Freeman, Linton. The Development of Social Network Analysis. Vancouver: Empirical Press, 2006. Print.
Hansel, Saul. “Advertisers Are Watching Your Every Tweet.” The New York Times. 2009: 18-20. Print.
Hansen, William and Eric Reese. Network Genie User Manual. Greensboro, NC: Tanglewood Research, 2009. Print.
Martin John Levi. Social Structures. USA: Princeton University Press, 2010.
McGrath, Blythe and Krackhardt. “The effect of spatial arrangement on judgements and errors in interpreting graphs”. Social Networks 19 (1997): 223-242.
Moody, James and Douglas White. “Structural Cohesion and Embeddedness: A Hierarchical Concept of Social Groups.” New York: American Sociological Review. 2003. Print.
Scott, John. Social Network Analysis. London: Sage, 1991. Print.
Shishkin, Philip. “Genes and the Friends You Make.” Wall Street Journal. 2009: 16-19. Print.
The Twitter Experiment. Twitter in the Classroom. Web.
Wellman, Barry and Berkowitz. Social Structures: A Network Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Print.