Twitter can be used in a number of ways in education. When I first started thinking about Twitter and its use in education, collaboration among teachers is what came to my mind. Twitter would be a great resource for teachers to use to communicate about curriculum. In Anne Arundel County we have pacing guides that tell us what to teach on certain days. Teachers could “tweet” each other about what day they are on in the pacing guide. Additionally, teachers could share ideas and websites that match the pacing guide and curriculum. Of course, using Twitter would be for short, quick comments due to the fact that “tweets” can be no more than 140 characters. For longer messages, teachers could post to blogs or email.
Twitter could also be used with students. It is an ideal resource for telecollaborative projects. In Social Studies we study urban, suburban, and rural areas in Anne Arundel County. Currently, we write letters to other schools informing them about our region and, in return, they write letters back to us about their region. The students enjoy hearing from other students about their school and region. The only complaint the students have is the length of time it takes to receive letters. I can only imagine the students excitement if they could sit down at a computer and send and receive real-times messages about different regions. This would give students the ability to ask questions and get immediate feedback. Using Twitter with this project would allow for a more exciting and meaningful lesson for the students.
Check out the Twitter blog for more ideas on using Twitter.
2 comments:
Hi Sara,
I agree with your comments about the usefulness of Twitter. Even though we work in the same school, I sometimes do not see colleagues of mine for several days. It would be great to be able to "tweet" them and find out where they are in the curriculum, if they can meet about a student, etc. I can also see it being used for telecollaborative projects with other schools.
I have had some trouble with Twitter however. I tried to set up something called a Group Tweet so that only people in my group would see my messages. So far, I have not had much luck. I was wondering if you were able to add any friends to your Twitter account and send them direct messages?
Please see my blog for my ideas about Twitter. Also, you might want to check out Pownce (www.pownce.com) which is a social-networking micro-blogging site that is similar to Twitter and is easy to use.
~Liz
Twitter is really very helpful in terms of education...
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