You Say You Want a Revolution? Twitter Educates the World

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/20/the_revolution_will_be_tweeted

An Examination of "The Revolution Will Be Tweeted" by Blake Hounshell for Foreign Policy Magazine

This article does not refer directly to classroom education, but I think that many of the points mentioned by the author in reference to the Arab Spring can be connected back to the classroom and how information is communicated. Internet culture is not nearly as prevalent in Egypt as it is in the United States, and so those who were Tweeting during the revolution had an entirely different mindset than Tweeters in America might have had: they are Tweeting out of a feeling of obligation rather than just as a pastime of sorts. This is not to say that Americans use Twitter as a pastime, but it makes sense to assume that activists' Tweets might be more "meaningful" in a place where they aren't as numerous.

I think that this article builds a strong case for teaching critical thinking and learning to see multiple sides of a given issue. Thanks to Twitter and other social media outlets, people from all over the world are becoming connected and it is so important to educate people to become global citizens, not just citizens of their home country. The Arab Spring Revolutions were talked about all over the world, on Twitter and elsewhere, which goes to show that Twitter is a powerful force when harnessed in the right way. As Hounshell discusses, Twitter is quite an "intimate space" that can have the power to truly change things when people use their voices to discuss what's going on. In terms of education, this idea gives students the chance to put themselves in a different mindset and think critically about the world through the lens of countless disciplines. The Arab Spring will be in history textbooks in the future, and it would be awesome to leave behind a legacy of global thinkers and doers that are average people, not just people on the higher rungs of society.