Utilizing Twitter© as a teaching platform for basic shell programming commands-administer accounts, networks and other resources

Abstract EN

Web 2.0 tools play authentic and active roles in education.

Twitter© is a social networking service that provides micro-blogging with 140 characters for every tweet (Nation).

Twitter© could be used as a powerful tool to exchange knowledge and experience.

IT220 is a class in the Computer Science Department at Faculty of Science and Technology in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; it is the first track in the bachelor program that discusses the basic Shell programming commands and principles and is an online class.

Learning Needs Analysis The project objective is to establish and develop a training program by using one of the Web 2.0 tools, Twitter©, to teach IT220 on-line synchronously.

Twitter© will provide an excellent opportunity for the learning community to interact at the same time.

The class approach will be based on collaboration and social negotiation.

In this approach, the learners are allowed to "distribute information and interact with information resources in a joint space...

[prompting] conceptual progress" (Hsiao, 1996).

The learners have to study the IT220 class at a distance.

The class goal is to review what the learners have studied, thus to teach the learner how to manage and control accounts, networks and the other resources by Shell.