Twitter, Skype, and Wikis--Oh my!

Online communication comes in many forms. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. As an educator, here is my personal review of several popular types: Skype, Twitter, and Wikis.

Skype
Skype is a tool used much like your old-school AOL Instant Messenger, but with video and audio capabilities. This is a very useful tool for quick communication between two computer users, such as two teachers in the same school confirming information about a lesson, or even business partners before making a purchase. The video and audio capacity make this tool more versatile by far than IM ever thought to be. Video conferencing with other schools in far-off places is now easier than ever--and free! Through Skype you can also share your computer screen with the other user, allowing tech help to be simplified. I know that my father would love to have this feature when aiding his step-father with his many computer mishaps.

As a teacher, the screen share frightens me a little bit. I would not allow my students to use Skype unsupervised because of this feature. I realize that each student would not be using this program independently anyway, but this feature makes me more adamant for the time being that this program only be loaded on our SmartBoard computer and used collectively. Through this program, I plant to interact with our Peace Corps Correspondent located in the Philippines. I also hope to do some collaborative work with another fifth grade teacher in my county who has taken the same technology class. This way, our students can bounce ideas off one another, and possibly play trivia games together.

Twitter
Each person has something to say about everything, and twitter is one of the few places this seems acceptable...at least, if you can say it in 180 characters or less! As a place to quickly share new ideas and blurbs about current topics, Twitter is a wonderful platform. Sharing websites with the help of tinyurl.com is another productive use of tweeting. However, tweeting about how your dog ate your socks this morning seems to be a waste of our collective cyber space.

I think Twitter is very useful--I have found many new informative websites and keep up with current news through the various people and organizations I follow. I also think that tweeting every little change in your day is excessive. I am not sure how I feel about using this application with my students. I love that you can protect your tweets so that you have to approve people to follow you. This makes this a safer application for students to use, but I am not sure at how purposeful I feel it is. After reading so many complaints on various blogs about the worthlessness of many tweets, I feel that for the most part an elementary age students tweets would not add much to the quality of the community. Students can create much more meaningful interactive environments elsewhere, in a place with room to say what needs to be said. A ten year old is simply not concise enough, or pithy enough, to create "quality" tweets.

Wikis
Creating a website is easier than ever before with the variety of wikis available. My personal favorite is WikiSpaces. This site allows users to create pages that can be edited by users that have the permission of the creator. All accounts are free, but a paid upgrade is available if the creator of a site wants to be rid of minor add space. More and more companies and educational communities are using this type of site because of its versitility and ease of design. Anyone can easily interact with a wiki.

Probably the most famous of all wikis is Wikipedia.com, an online encyclopedia created and edited by a community of people. While we encourage our students to not use this site as a source for papers or any other academic useage, I find myself using the site to check information that I need quickly. It is a wonderful "fast and dirty" way to get normally accurate information. It is true that anyone can change a Wikipedia entry, and that not all entries are credible, but when used in concert with other sources, or as a starting point for further research, Wikipedia is a very helpful creature.

Overall, I feel the most useful type of online communication community for students is a wiki. Only those invited can change a space, and they do not typically come up when a particular topic is googled. Students can add discussion to pages, and create various multi-media and upload them directly to the site. Not all wikis allow this, but several do, including WikiSpaces. I know a middle school teacher who has an AMAZING wiki that she uses with her creative communication students. Someday, I hope my fifth graders become as involved with our wiki.