Reflection
Final Reflection
After reading through, exploring, and experiencing some of the higher/open education accounts on Twitter, I’ve learned about another medium used to distribute learning. A few of the higher education accounts that I explored were really fascinating to me since they were able to deliver their message or educational material with only 280 characters. Often times, it feels that in order to educate someone, we need pages upon pages of explanation. It was refreshing to see that these higher education professionals were able to articulate their ideas, findings, and interests with such a small amount of text. A few of the accounts that I found particularly interesting were @BCOpenText and @edifiedlistener. I found that their tweets and ideas related back to course concepts and helped solidify those ideas and teachings for me.
I really enjoyed @BCOpenText since it shares resources related to open textbooks in BC. Their bio states exactly what the account is about, which is “contributing to the development of an open future for teaching practices and educational resources” (Twitter: @BCOpenText, 2020). I think this account is a great example of how we can make textbooks more accessible for students and their learning. It also shows how open education doesn’t necessarily mean that the entire course has to be offered through an open environment, but even by integrating a textbook that is open-sourced. This account also reminded me of one of our readings, which was titled “A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students” (Mays & DeRosa, 2017).
Another account I really took to was @edifiedlistener. I read through a thread of tweets related to how icebreakers are currently being used in education. Sherri tweeted that “icebreakers as a source of disdain, annoyance or derision comes up often in my feed and I get it. Folks resent being set up to reveal themselves superficially or to potentially end up as the punchline of a bad joke.” (Twitter: @edifiedlistener, 2020). I agree that often times icebreakers seem very superficial and that if used properly could actually offer some benefit to the people using them. One user in the thread mentioned that they teach a geography course and so they get students to draw a map of the world to see what knowledge they currently have. She explains that this activity can cause people to ask questions like “hmm, you guys knew the Middle East; did you study that before? Oh, you’ve been there? TELL ME MORE!” (Twitter: @Altair4_2381, 2020). I like how this icebreaker isn’t focused on getting students to just talk about themselves, but rather focus on their pre-existing knowledge about a topic and get them talking about how they know what they know. Icebreakers are such a common tool in education, and so this open discussion on Twitter about how to improve them is something worth looking into.
I know this reflection is a bit longer than expected, but I really appreciated everything that these accounts were talking about. I feel as though these accounts embody the core principles and teachings that this course was focused on. Going forward, I think exploring open textbooks is something I can integrate into my current life since there could be valuable textbooks available through @BCOpenText. I also think the principles that @edifiedlistener mentioned are things that can be easily applied to how I approach future activities such as icebreakers. Overall, I think this research of Twitter has really helped solidify open learning for me, and I’m looking forward to further expanding this knowledge.
References
@Altair4_2381’s Twitter Account
@edifiedlistener’s Twitter Account
Mays, E., & DeRosa, R. (2017). A guide to making open textbooks with students. Montreal: The Rebus Community for Open Textbook Creation.