I wish life could be as simple as Twitter: Follow, unfollow, block,” Paolo Coelho wittingly writes about the benefits of Twitter. Indeed, Coelho is one of the most followed writers on the social platform and each of his tweets reveals the author’s sublime wisdom and humility.
Whenever I need to be amused, I sign-in to Facebook, but when inspiration and motivation are necessary for me to go on with my work, Twitter has been a constant ally, especially in my work as an educator.
What was previously a social platform broadcasting narcissistic rants of famous celebrities has been turned into a medium where intellectual ideas are exchanged and shared. That is, of course, if one follows the right people.
And professional organizations. In a country that doesn’t have a high regard for teachers, the education field has the impression of being static and rigid. Teachers content themselves with old methods and there is a lack of exchange of ideas and approaches except for the occasional seminars attended only by a few educators sent by their respective schools.
Twitter, however, has revealed how teachers in the Philippines should start collaborating with each other. This is made possible when one views exchanges of teachers and educators in the US, where discussions have been nothing but animated and lively. These conversations range from what works in the classroom to debates about what the US government should require its public schools to include in the core curriculum, how the government should encourage poor performing students, and why the reliance on national assessments is a poor gauge of school achievement. The atmosphere of exchanges is so vibrant that US President Barrack Obama’s government formulated a “Race to the Top” policy where performing schools are given additional state funding from the government. We see here a President directly involved in how education is facilitated in the country by a creative albeit controversial proposal. Compare that to the Philippine setting where education is only mentioned in the news because of classroom shortages. There are no public exchanges about what should be taught to the Filipino youth and what incentives should be given to ensure everyone has access to quality education. This wishful thinking will be realized not by waiting for the government to act but by teachers initiating and maintaining dialogue and interest about how education is done in the country. Likewise, these exchanges should not be confined to the offices of administrators and supervisors. Rather, these should be accessible to all teachers and other stakeholders via social networks like twitter.
In twitter, the best educational organizations to follow are the accounts ASCD, eschoolnews, and edutopia. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) is well known for its professional educational journal magazine and its service to teachers by continuously sharing innovations and resources. In its twitter account, ASCD shares free materials that can be used in a lesson and makes teachers re-think every now and then their practices and policies in the classroom and how these measure up to scientific studies. Best of all, ASCD offers web seminars, or what they call webinars to all teachers around the world free of charge. Other accounts like eschoolnews tweets articles, information, and resources on how teachers are using technology in the classroom while edutopia shares hip and trendy tweets about recent trends and what works in education.
Twitter itself is used by many teachers as an educational tool. Rebecca Itow of Indiana University makes her students assume the personality of a literary character and challenges them to tweet while in role. This enables students to analyze the assigned characters and become active readers by empathizing with the traits of the literary characters. Keri Franklin, on the other hand, uses twitter to practice the writing skills of her students. She recognizes the fact that users of twitter still deal with the constraints of writing since a favored tweet requires supporting details, choice of words, and a sense of an audience. These teachers and their methods I got to know, thanks to edutopia.
One of my English teachers in college taught me that a short essay is more difficult to write than a multi-page paper. The short material demands a writer to delete superfluous information and stick to what is essential. That should apply as well to a platform that only allows you 140 words to share your thoughts, intrigue others with your questions, and entice your followers to read longer materials. The power of twitter lies in its user’s ability to share knowledge using as few words as possible. Through these short tweets, however, education has never been as vibrant, dynamic, and talked about as it is today.