ReadWriteWeb reported on a Dallas history professor, Monica Rankin, who has been experimenting with using Twitter in the classroom.
“Rankin uses a weekly hashtag to organize comments, questions and feedback posted by students to Twitter during class. Some of the students have downloaded Tweetdeck to their computers, others post by SMS or by writing questions on a piece of paper. Rankin then projects a giant image of live Tweets in the front of the class for discussion and suggests that students refer back to the messages later when studying.”
Social media is a participatory medium - it encourages people to get involved. ELearning in general helps extend content beyond the classroom or work setting - providing an accessible resource. This is a great example of how the two can be combined.
And while Twitter may be the flavour of the day, this kind of process could easily work via a wiki, blog or even Google docs - all free, all easily accessible and all fit for the purpose.
Have you used a similar approach? Know any examples like this in the local government sector?
