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Tony Bates is the author of eleven books in the field of online learning and distance education and has most recently worked as consultant for Tony Bates Associates LTD in the planning and management of e-learning and distance education.\u00a0 He uses Twitter to share his ideas about e-learning, distance education, and current research in learning and technology.\u00a0 His experience is broad, he has worked for private businesses, government, and universities; however, he currently works as a Research Associate for Contact North, an organization supporting rural and remote Indigenous and Francophone communities access education from their communities.\u00a0 His educational interests include higher education, providing resources for students, faculty, and administrators interested in online learning, and teaching with technology.\u00a0 As a professional, Bates provides leadership and consultation that support the planning, management, and integration of e-learning technology.\u00a0 It has been argued that, John Dewey viewed a community of learning essential to the success of developing knowledge and learning (Cummings, 2000).\u00a0 Like Dewey, Bates advocates for the effective development of online learning environments that are collaborative and build a community of learning.<\/p>\n
Bates uses his Twitter account to disseminate information from his website tonybates.ca to his followers.\u00a0 Based on my research of Bates\u2019 Twitter account, he has never retweeted a single tweet that I came across throughout this research process (I scrolled through about 2.5 years of Tweets).\u00a0 The way Bates\u2019 disseminates ideas on Twitter, is closely aligned to how an educator might develop a knowledge-centered learning environment.\u00a0 Knowledge-centered learning environments focus on helping learners with deep understanding developing critical thinking skills.\u00a0 Knowledge-centered learning is constructed and sequenced so that subject matter builds on pre-existing knowledge (Egan-Simon, 2019).\u00a0 John McPeck (2000) and other critical thinking theorists argue that teaching general thinking skills and techniques is useless outside of a particular knowledge domain in which they can be grounded.\u00a0 Dewey argued that curriculum should be relevant to learners\u2019 lives (Dewey & Archambault, 1974).\u00a0 Bates\u2019 Twitter feed is very focused and for someone who does not have some investment or interest in the field of education, the information Bates is tweeting would be irrelevant and his tweets would be easily passed by.\u00a0 Bates is also creating a well-organized, extensive resource covering topics on online learning, distance education, research, open educational resources, strategic planning, cost-benefit analysis for educational technology, virtual reality, gaming, learning management systems, and policy development and management targeted towards higher education, he also tweets about primary and and secondary education.\u00a0 He is disseminating facts, ideas, and concepts that are relevant to education, in a timely manner.<\/p>\n