Are you using Twitter to teach?

[Mary Hricko]

I am looking for educators who are teaching with Twitter because I would like to know what type of assignments they are doing and how they have their students use the twitter accounts. OR are you using edmodo instead?

[Steven Greene]

Hi George,
I haven't explored this site fully, but I was inserviced by the teacher that created it re: digital citizenship, responsibility and safety. If you scan the links bar on the right of the page and then search through some resource there, I know you will run into something valuable: http://www.brsd.ab.ca/daysland/
Sorry I can't give you something a little more packaged.

I teach the older kids 7-12 and I find that allowing them to make mistakes and get caught in school, ie: surfing porn, mass messaging boys looking for contacts and relationships, allows us to give them real life lessons about the behaviour.

I think in general we are not educating our boys, and girls, enough about the danger and harm of the social disease online pornography. It's too taboo to talk about properly, I personally get awkward when I am compelled to bring it up with students.

I think some of the fears re: online predators, identity theft are blown a little bit out of proportion. Blocked sites are also very frustrating.

I guess the issues are much different for your age group. What are your primary concerns?

[Linda Bennett]

Hi All,

I just started a cohort project to build a virtual version of my sophomore chemistry class using Twitter as one of the support tools, but like many of you who posted, I am unfamiliar with the technology. I also fear our district has it blocked. What is edmodo?

Thanks!
-Linda

[Schoolbinder]

You can prepare / study for an exam with Twitter. Have the students Twitter the answers to your questions. Display them on a projector. You can split the room into to teams. Then have a "Family Feud." Have two students face off. First one to Twitter the correct answer (on the projector) wins a point for their team.

Shelly Blake-Plock has a great blog with lots of ideas: http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/

[Alexandra M. Pickett]

I use twitter at the higher ed level. in my masters level fully online course. It is an experimental course, intro to online teaching in the education department and SUNY albany in which i incorporate about 10 web2.0 tools for various purposes outside the moodle course shell. Last year i just used twitter as a way to make quick and easy course announcements to the students. This year, in addition to following me personally, and the course announcements stream, i have asked all the students to sign up and to explore the tool as an extension of and to actually extend their personal learning environment beyond the confines of the class.

the course twitter stream: http://twitter.com/etap687
a course tour, if you are interested: http://etap687.edublogs.org/course-tour/
here is a link to our voicethreads ice breaking activity: http://voicethread.com/share/450225/

Alex

[Jeffrey A. Wardlaw]

As a music teacher (university-level), I have students live blog concert critiques via Twitter. Since it is accessible via SMS, and most students have an unlimited text messaging plan on their phones, live blogging via Twitter seems to work well. Understand, though, that we must sequester these students in a location away from the main audience during the performance (concert etiquette is important to maintain, too). The students with whom I've piloted this approach prefer the live blogging (Tweeting) throughout the semester over writing a single concert critique. I set up a separate Twitter account specifically for live blogging.

Am considering asking students to use Twitter as a tool to gauge student understanding/learning after a class meeting. What did they take from the day's class. This, hopefully, will facilitate reflection while forcing students to be direct and concise in their communication while offering me the opportunity to identify if I've covered the material well enough.