Technology and lectures - Twitter helps to communicate

Kirsti Lonka, Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Helsinki, urges teachers to bring technology into teaching. This in spite of the fact that, in her opinion, e-learning is dead and buried.
- Technology cannot be a separate part of the teaching situation. It should not go so that the teacher is talking in the front and something completely different is happening on the Internet.

The lecture hall as a learning environment places the teacher in an active and the students in a passive role. According to Lonka, only about 10 per cent of students think that they are in the most optimal mental state for learning in a lecture situation and that they get a suitable amount of challenge for their brains.

However, it is possible to activate the students even in traditional premises. Lonka urges teachers to use Twitter. Even a shy person will find it easy to give feedback or send questions from his/her own computer or mobile phone to the teacher’s Twitter. The view from Twitter can be projected for everyone to see and the questions and comments can be discussed together.

- Let’s talk about the people from Häme who take their time to warm up in the lecture hall. If I start activating them in the first lecture, in the third one they will have the courage to speak, Lonka laughs.

- Although shyness in the teaching situation is by no means only a Finnish characteristic.

According to Lonka, mobile phones, computers and technology are often shut out of the lecture hall in today’s teaching. However, these devices should be made use of because nowadays they are a natural way of searching for information to the young people.

Kirsti Lonka spoke at the University of Tampere on 9 August in a conference organized by IFLA, the international library association.