Tuesday May 31st: Twitter in education?

Captains log star-date 05-31-2011

"How are you feeling today?"  asked my Principal (for whom I have much respect).
"I'm feeling pretty good.  Why?  Whats up?"
"You have to stop using Twitter," he said with a look on his face that was similar to that of someone who had just seen a car accident.  Hours of writing, reviewing literature, thousands of dollars, and not to mention, a project that could truly create knowledge in the research world, GONE!

Lets back up.  This last summer I designed a research project based on the use of Twitter in my 8th grade science class.  I was so excited.  My favorite part of the grueling work of preparing the first three chapters of  my proposal was my literature review.  I found NOTHING like my research project.  I was working on something that higher education had never done.  That fact pushed me to take pride in every word I wrote, and I became immersed in my research.  I was so excited to put the petal to the metal and begin the new school year and my research.  Late August rolled around and school was ready to begin.  I couldn't have been more excited.  Along with the usual beginning of the year routine, I spent a day talking about the new technology that I was planning on using.  The lesson began with, "please clear your desks and get out your cell phones..."

The reaction from the students was priceless.  I quickly found out who truly trusted me; those three students immediately began reaching into their backpacks.  The other 35 students gave me a look that screamed, "What?  Do you think I'm stupid?"

In this day and age, the tools most successful businesses and business men and women use to achieve success are considered evil.  If we see them we take them and bring them to the office as if they are some sort of alien weapon designed to.....God forbid, engage students.  And here I am asking them to take them out for a lesson...like I said, priceless.

And so it began, 42 students got the ok from their parents to create a Twitter account for my class.  I had my Twitter sample.  I scrambled to created a matched sample of 42 students who were not using Twitter that were as identical as possible in race, socioeconomic status, gender, parents level of education, incoming GPA, student sub groups such as english language learners, special ed, GATE, and many more identifiers.  After gallons of coffee and data diving I knew that if the evidence I gathered showed a significant increase in students performance on standardized curriculum tests, and overall grades the only difference between these two samples was the use of Twitter.  I did a great job, and was quite proud of myself.  I set up spreadsheets to track the data of these two samples, who were now only numbers according to my reserach, and began sending Tweets to my twitter sample.  Two weeks into my research period my Principal found me at lunch and asked the devastating question you see above.

Stay tuned...