In the article STUDENTS’
PERCEPTIONS OF A TWITTERBASED ASSIGNMENT IN A GRADUATE-LEVEL INSTRUCTIONAL
TECHNOLOGY COURSE it is an insightful article about the challenge of learning
while using technology. If further discusses
three students’ obstacles and achievements while using technology as a medium. Some of the obstacles using twitter were character
limitation, phone compatibility; or learning how to use twitter efficiently to
do the assignment. Many times the students
felt that they even thought they were completing the assignments they were not
able to respond to post without it being a hassle or they had to hunt for the
thread to respond to a person’s tweet.
Other times they felt that due to the character limitation that
meaningful conversations were not able to happen often time leaving them
frustrated. A negative and positive aspect
was that the student felt they were more focused on the assignment and were
doing the assignment even when they were not meaning to, they felt there was
not a switch to turn off the assignments.
This was viewed as negative and positive by the students, some students
saw that the assignment was being done without thought and had to intentional
stop and post and respond later others felt that the assignments were intruding
in on their personal life that there was no separation. Overall using this technology while they
students thought it would be a technology medium that was be useful most did
not like the technology as a whole.
This article to me proved that just
using technology in the classroom is not a good reason to use technology. When using technology in the classroom you
have to think with the end in mind. What
is the outcome that you want the technology to achieve? Who
is using the technology and is it a good fit for all the users. In education we have students who are gifted,
normal, below normal and special.
Technology is not a one size fits all while reading this article I found
that there were things that the students liked but more importantly there were
limitations that hindered the creativity of the students. Most of the time the students felt frustrated
trying to use the technology medium designed for this course when doing
assignments. As a teacher this is what
you want to avoid at all cost. The
lesson I took away is technology can be a wonderful outlet but as a teacher
using the technology or assigning the technology it need to enhance the lessons
not hinder the learning of the student.
Nygard, S., Day, M., Fricke, G.,
& Knowlton, D. S. (2014). STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF A TWITTERBASED
ASSIGNMENT IN A GRADUATE-LEVEL INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY COURSE. Quarterly
Review Of Distance Education, 15(4), 1-14.