David Zax / ASEE Prism Magazine / October 2009 / Twitter can improve teacher-student communication, in and out of class. In most respects, Prof. Natasha Neogi's aerospace engineering class is like any other. It's a large, hour-long lecture-style course at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. But at the halfway mark, Neogi's class takes on a new twist. She invites her students to log on to Twitter - the "micro-blogging" service that limits messages to 140 characters - and write in with questions. Neogi sifts through the "tweets," in Twitter-speak, addressing the most common sticking point at the end of class. Of course, plenty of professors - engineering and otherwise - have long been using Twitter. They tweet about interesting links they've come across; they complain about their flight delays; they keep us updated on their cats. But there are also professors who, like Neogi, have begun to bring Twitter into the lecture hall or seminar room. [snip] [snip] Gordon Snyder, who directs the National Center for Information and Communications Technologies at Springfield Technical Community College in Massachusetts, has also experimented with the back channel. He assigned his class a "hashtag", [snip] He also has found Twitter useful for getting a read on a room. Professors are familiar with the inscrutable sight of a lecture hall full of mute students. Are they listening? Understanding? Many professors have adopted "clickers," polling devices used to quiz students on a topic recently covered or to gauge students' opinions when venturing into politically sensitive subject matter. Snyder, whose center is funded by the National Science Foundation, considers Twitter a "modern and much more effective" clicker. Of course, skepticism in academia remains the norm ... . But Twitter evangelists have ready answers for skeptics. Does it erase a necessary distance between professor and student, eroding professional authority? That depends on your view, says McDonald: If you think, "'Well, I'm the teacher, and people just need to listen to what I have to say'... then Twitter is not useful for you." Does Twitter distract students? "I see it as a way to keep students engaged," says Snyder. Besides, some argue, students often are already using these technologies in class; professors are simply co-opting a tool that would otherwise serve as a distraction. "If you can't beat 'em, might as well join 'em," sums up Kathy Schmidt, director of the Faculty Innovation Center for the College of Engineering at the University of Texas - Austin. [more] Links To Full Article Available At [ http://tinyurl.com/yad4e7b ] !!! Thanks To My ISU Colleague / Dr. Jacob D. Schroeder / For The HeadsUp !! As Previously Requested > I Am Greatly Interested In Any / All Library ; Educational Uses / Applications Of Twitter / Other Microblogging Technologies || Please Post As A Comment(s) On The Blog Entry ... Thanks A Million !!! Regards, /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Associate Professor Science and Technology Librarian Iowa State University Library Ames IA 50011 gerrymck@iastate.edu There Is No Answer, Only Solutions / Olde Irish Saying The Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Evenly Distributed Attributed To William Gibson, SciFi Author / Coined 'Cyberspace