Twitter in Teaching and Learning

Twitter can be used very efficiently in education. In teaching it can be used  to give info about class room activity, seminar discussions, conference informations as well as assignment deadlines etc etc.  Also if there is one scientist who is doing an important research, then he can share all the info by tweeting and people who are interested in his work can follow that person for immediate updates.  They can even reply to the tweets.

If one wants to share a great resource about one course, they can just tweet it, and people who follow him/her can get the info very quickly.Teachers can also perform live quiz with twitter, and all students can reply to the tweet. It will be a very fun way of learning. If any one shared an important news, then it can be retweeted by other so that more tweeple can get the news.

By using Hashtags (#) number of tweeple (the people who tweet) can join in the discussion. By this one can get inspired and get new ideas. And one great thing about tweeting is, people can share information with very few characters from any where from iPhone to iPad or from any other mobile devices. 

Teachers are increasingly bringing the real-time communication power of Twitter into the classroom to help students learn. 

The use of Twitter in education can be summarized as below:

• Internet resources like Twitter give students access to information — more importantly, perhaps — to people beyond the classroom walls. Students can post inquiries online and receive responses in real- or near real-time.
• A Twitter account for a school or a teacher can be another means (and a paperless one at that) to communicate information to parents on things like events and deadlines.
•   Twitter has become a key tool for creating personal learning networks, enabling anyone to build their own connections with other Twitter users, sharing learning resources and support. 
• People use Twitter to communicate, to ask questions, to ask for directions, support, advice, and to validate open-ended interpretations or ides by discussing with others.
• Twitter has mashed up personal publishing and communication, the result being a new type of real-time publishing.Each user is able to monitor the notes of other users, who will be listed inthe profile, under Following. Thus the user becomes Follower for them.

How to open an External link

Some times while designing a webpage we need to refer to some other webpage, It can either a completely external page or a page within our folder. We need to hyperlink it to that. The following video teaches how to create a link to an external page

Optimizing images for the Web

For the 2nd assignmnet of a course from Highschool of Kristianstad I have started to read about the topic of optimizing images for the web. Now I understand how important it is for web developers and designers while designing a website. Because pictures or images plays an important role to engage the user of the website. And if the Image is of too large size then it will take more time to load which intrun makes the visitor of the web imaptient. Lot of webdesigerns and developers optimize the images so as to occupy less diskspace along with preserving same quality.

First image is austornaut.ttif which is having more than 8MB size. I have tried to compress the image as either in a PNG format or in a JPEG format, because JPEGs work best for photographs or images with smooth color blends.PNG files can contain any image type and are often a good substitute for the GIF format.(According to Course literature Learning Web Design, by Jennifer Nierderst Robbins). They can also contain images with transparent or partially transparent areas..I have used GIMP software (free software for optimizing images). I have tried to compress the image in png format, and found out that the size it is occupying for dimenstions of 300X300 pixels is 193KB, so I tried to compress the same image in JPEG format, In this format the quality of the image is kept at perfect level, and the size it occupied for dimension of 500X500 pixels is only 102KB.

For the other images I have chosen to go for gif format. Because GIF format is appropriate for images containing only a few colours and having large monochrome parts, for instance graphical objects, icons, illustrations, logotypes etc. The images occupied very less size afterwards.
link to the webpage http://home.hkr.se/~padu0002/assignment1/index.html
And I have created one screencast for creating link to an external website. http://home.hkr.se/~padu0002/assignment2/linktonewpage.html

Use of Microblogs in Education and Teaching

The first assignment that I have been given for the course of Social Software Web course from Umeå University is to blog about "Use of Microblogs in Education and Teaching".


First of all, what is MICROBLOG? According to Wiki - "A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links""
And according to Webopedia - "Microblog is type of blog that lets users publish short text updates. Bloggers can usually use a number of service for the updates including instant messaging, e-mail, or Twitter. The posts are called microposts, while the act of using these services to update your blog is called microblogging.  Social networking sites, like Facebook, also use a microblogging feature in profiles. On Facebook this is called "Status Updates"."

Educational hype has a long and resilient history of jumping on the latest technology as the means of making education better, cheaper, more available or more responsive. The wise use of web 2.0 technologies in education addresses this call for students to develop 21st century skills. Blogging, wikis, e-portfolios and social networks are all excellent tools for allowing learners to clarify concepts, establish meaningful links and relationships, and test their mental models. 

Both teachers and especially students have been using blogs as well as social networks to get the job done, have fun and learn something in the process. The end goal is to make education more efficient, but also a little bit less of a task. That’s why microblogging might be the answer to a lot of educator’s needs.


Microblogging is a Web2.0 technology anda new formof blogging, that let the users publish online brief textupdates, usually less then 140-200 characters, sometimesimages too. The posts can be edited and accessed online,or sent as SMS, e-mail or via instant messaging clients.Usually the microblogsauthors embed theirposts as awidget on blogs or sites


The reasons can be summarized as below:

• Even though Wiki's and other blogs are available to share huge information and there are other sharing services are available , most of the time people want to share some important and valuable small snippet of information. Instead of uploading huge files, it will be easier to microblog about the info will reach the end users in an effective and efficient manner.
• A text field and friend list on the other hand, found in most microblogging software, is simple and easy to grasp. Also, with such applications as Twhirl and about hundreds of others, users can access the microblogging network any way he or she wants.
• By making the people express in less no. of characters, people will try to figure out the main point of the discussion i.e. get to the point quickly.
• If a teacher wants to inform about some deadline for an assignment etc, it can be shared with microblogging very easily. 

“E-learning and Social Networking Handbook: Resources for Higher Education“,  does not gave any info about the microblogging, it is main concerned with web 2.0. But in my opinion, the microblog is very powerful and perfect way for modern teaching.