Long before technological revolution, most class discussions are done inside the classroom where teachers ask questions and students answer the question. With technological development, it became possible for teachers to bring class discussions outside the four walls of the classroom. While reading the discussion in TwitterChat, I would say that I feel like I am inside the classroom once again, listening to my teacher and classmates exchange ideas. This means online discussions are as good as face to face discussions. Although it is true that twitter can be utilized to support open education, educators and learners should be aware of the risks of using it.
One of the advantages of using twitter is it can amplify the voices of the learners. For instance, when Dr. Roberts asked about the openness and sharing in K-12 educational contexts, learners can easily share their ideas and thoughts about the topic. Compared to face to face discussions, learners feel more confident to share their thoughts online. In addition to this, when learners share their ideas online, they could reach people from all over the world. I find this advantageous because connecting with other teachers and learners will give them varied perspective on a certain topic and it could also increase everyone’s learning opportunities. Moreover, twitter also enables renewable assignments. Renewable assignments are public, open-licensed tasks created by students to support their learning (Wiley and Hilton, 2018). Through twitter the tasks created by students can be publicly accessed and it also freely available to those who want to use it. Moving forward, despite the advantages of using Twitter as an Open Learning Environment, educators and learners should also take note of its downsides as well. For instance, just like other social media sites, Twitter is also collecting data. For this reason, twitter might put the educator and learner’s privacy at risk. In addition to this, since everyone can join in twitter discussions, sockpuppet accounts may ruin the discussion through sharing unrelated stuff. This means the discussions in twitter could be hard to regulate.
In conclusion, to promote openness and sharing in K-12 educational contexts, educators and learners should know how to properly use twitter and other open platforms to their advantage. Educators and learners should also know what open platform they find convenient to use because different platforms have different user interface. There is a possibility that learning will be hindered when the users of open platforms find it hard to navigate through the site. In addition to this, they should also responsibly use the site through being aware of its negative sides as well. Being aware of the risks of using open platforms will help the users to take precautionary measures. I believe that most open platforms have negative sides. However, it is not a good reason enough to quit utilizing open platforms altogether.
Reference
Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. L. (2018). Defining OER-enabled pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i4.3601