Twitter in the Classroom
The Short and Sweet of it!
Why should you consider using Twitter in the classroom?
How could Twitter support the curriculum?
- Cultivate a PLN for your students
- Develop questioning and inquiry
- Develop thoughtful and concise expression
- Raise global awareness through information sharing
What is it and how does it work?
- Twitter is a microblogging social network!
- Posts are 140 characters long including any website or hashtags (#) you add.
- Follow others, post your own tweets, repost tweets from other people.
Ideas for using Twitter in the classroom
- Live Tweet a field trip
- Build excitement or extend a field trip: tweet questions or observations that students thought of after the trip ( ex. WNC Nature Center, NC Arobretum )
- Follow up after a Skype session (Grand Tetons National Park)
- Follow an author
- Spark interest and generate excitement! (Wonderopolis )
- Follow an organization that serves as a resource for content ( Journey North )
- Communicate with other classrooms around the world
- Collect questions, observations, thoughts on a Twitter bulletin board. Teacher adds to account.
- Communicate with parents ( you don't have to have a smartphone to get tweets! )
- Use Twitter search to research a topic with students
- Great ideas from Common Sense Media for Twitter in the Classroom
- Even more ideas for an K-2
Things to think about as you get started
- First of all, set up a classroom Twitter account that is separate from your personal account. You might want to have students Tweet through the class account.
- Create a username that identifies your class and/or your school (ex. @VanceMsAllen). You can change it later if you need or want to.
- Keep posts learning related. Be thoughtful in your posts. Quality over quantity.
- BE AWARE OF NO MEDIA RELEASES. You must be careful when posting pics.
- Use bit.ly to shorten any URLs you use in your posts to help stay within 140 characters.