In Twitter, people can share whatever they like as long as their posts are legal, such as articles, tutorial videos, selfies, conversations and so on. Among these, articles, tutorial videos are educational resources.

There is no doubt that Twitter can be used to increase access to education. For example, people using Twitter can share resources, which can be regarded as  Open Educational Resources to a certain degree. More open resources can be accessed if more people are glad to post learning materials.

That is to say, As an “open platform”, Twitter can benefit both the educators and learners a lot. The users of Twitter are more than millions of people who can bring a wide range of resources. Thanks to Twitter’s huge user base, the amount of open educational resources can be huge. People are more likely to find the resources they want. Meanwhile, all of the resources can be access easily for free as Twitter is a public open platform, which can help learners save much money and time. In addition, people can learn from the experience and successful learning stories from others and can ask them for help. Even more luckily, they can make friends with people who have the same goals or interest with them. For educators, it might be easier to share instructions and other information because most of people nowadays choose to use Twitter as their social networking applications and they are familiar with the sharing and accessing information steps. In a public platform, instead of sending email to teachers for help, students can help each other to make progress, which will be more efficient and convenient.

Sometimes I am thinking about does Twitter do more harm than good to learners and educators? Although I am not certain about the answer, Twitter does has a negative effect on learners and educators. As a social networking platform, Twitter at most time provides a platform for people to express their feelings or opinions and helps people make friends with each other. While sharing resources in Twitter, it would be easy to distract learners’ attraction because the information sources are various and not all of the information in Twitter is helpful. For educators, after all Twitter is not a formal platform for people to share Open Educational Resources, its functions for this is not complete enough. What’s more, since it is open learning circumstance, some students might be unwilling to download a Twitter and even some learners have difficulty downloading it or using it in their countries.

In my opinion, Twitter is a double-edged sword to open learning and the sharing of open educational resources. Only if people make full use of it, can it benefit us to the maximum degree.

 

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