Today’s World: Social Media
In today’s world if a situation is such that the world is going to end, then let us know what people will prefer to do. Well, what tops the To-do list is bang it over a social media site.
The impact of social media to an
individual’s life has grown so intensely that most of them are addicted to it. But there are few social networking sites which are far more beneficial than just connecting people. One among this category is Twitter
.
Twitter is best site for information sharing. Its increase in usage even made way, the word to the dictionary. Twitter was initially built in purpose to access group of users to fetch information. Now twitter adds the features to support social media for students. And twitter with its daily updated product in no less than a research project. The largest users of twitter are students and reason behind is their coupling of education with entertainment.
Why use Twitter?
The power of twitter like social media is much more than it seems. Twitter has many fascinating features readily developed for students, which is a research element in sense. Here are some great practices how students can use twitter for research.
1. Create a poll
A great starting point for research is the generation of new statistical results on a given topic, but when restricted to their own friends and contacts, it can be difficult for students to get enough results to provide a representative sample. This problem can be solved via Twitter using a clever tool like Pollowers
, which literally turns your Twitter followers’ tweets into poll responses. Pollowers is a simple and fun Twitter application that lets you Poll your Followers Simply ask a question in a tweet, then sit back and watch as the tool catalogues responses, allowing you to follow and record the results in real-time.
Poll is useful for many students for conducting survey for their research product. A survey in return acts as a feedback. A practical poll is difficult to create and maintain. With the help of social media, students could arrange many people opinions by digitally creating poll and asking others, their choice.
2. Keep up to date with new developments
Twitter can be a great tool for research, but students don’t always have time to trawl through tweets every day looking for updates on their topics of study. Twilert
is a Twitter application that enables one to receive regular email alerts of tweets containing your brand, product, service or any keyword you like. A great tool like Twilert can help; sending instant alerts (like Google alerts) to let students know when a particular research keyword has been mentioned on Twitter. The tool then takes them directly to the relevant tweet, cutting out all the unproductive time spent searching for pertinent information.
Twilert also allows users to filter the content that is sent to users via category based keyword analysis. The email alerts sent are based on further users or followers of that particular product or service. This enables frequent source of information through tweets.
3. Hold a #hashtag chat
When it comes social media site, everyone is aware of chat. The chat options allow one to one chat, personal chat or even group chat like conferences. Earlier Twitter did not have such options. The reason behind it was that, it was not designed in such a way. But now nearly similar to chat, twitter has added up the #hashtag chat.
By creating their own hashtag, students can invite participants from around the world to take part in instant research by contributing to a live discussion on any given topic. Collect all responses and count up the answers to perform a post-discussion statistical analysis. Students may wish to quote some of the responses to a Twitter chat in their research – a great way to provide immediacy and individual viewpoints to project work. It’s always advisable to advertise the time and date of a Twitter chat a few days in advance, including the hashtag that will be used, to generate a buzz and guarantee a good, responsive turnout on the day.
4. Ask the experts
The fantastic thing about Twitter is that the tool facilitates direct contact with leaders in any given field. Encourage students to ask questions from world-renowned scientists and thinkers. Even if they don’t immediately reply, other experts may well rise to the challenge instead! Follow field-leading accounts such as National Geographic
and New Scientist to keep up-to-date with expert information daily.
5. Conduct interviews
From famous faces, to academics who might be almost impossible to track down in real life, Twitter offers students the very real opportunity to elicit direct responses to their interview questions, albeit in 140 characters or less. Tweeting a range of experts on a given topic should yield at least one or two expert quotes that students can include in reports or project work.
At the end of it, I could literally write down that, twitter is best for students. By doing various Researches, the Team Twitter is continuously working out to launch more of their features. The continuous development leads to transformation for good. Twitter for research is a gift for us. The role of twitter for students and in education has already taken over other social networking sites to an extent.
