Twitter in the Classroom

On the website Educational Technology and Mobile Learning I found a great list of educational uses for Twitter. The list was broken up into five categories: Communication, Organization, Resources, Writing Skills, and Twitter Exercises. The more common educational uses for Twitter were listed such as sending out mass announcements, providing feedback and communicating with parents. There were also many ideas that had not occurred to me. For example, under communication there was a suggestion to use Twitter as ambient office hours so that teachers can be more accessible to students. Under organization a suggestion I thought could be really useful to me in the future was using Twitter to recap the day's lesson. A recommendation under resources was to follow Twitter news streams in the target language. For writing skills an idea I liked was assigning a daily or weekly word game on Twitter. Then under Twitter exercises I thought another good idea was to give bonus points for students who use Twitter to participate in discussions that they might feel uncomfortable to join in class.

A second article I read addressed how to establish a Twitter routine in the classroom. The author was writing specifically about grades K-8 who cannot establish their own Twitter accounts but I think the information can be adapted to other age groups. The visual roadmap graphic was really informative. It starts out by pointing out why teachers should Tweet with their class for example to communicate, to practice writing skills and to develop a sense of digital citizenship. The roadmap then moves on to how to familiarize students with the Twitter scene, what it means to be a follower, how to follow someone, and how to evaluate the feeds of others. Finally the visual shows how using Twitter can encourage students to use both lower and higher order thinking skills. I found this graphic very helpful in visualizing the process of introducing and utilizing Twitter in the classroom.