I have been aware of Twitter for many years but never gave a lot of thought into joining. I thought Twitter was just like Facebook, a site to use to connect with friends and family. It wasn't until recently that I started to see the benefits of Twitter as an educator. Twitter is a form of blog that limits the user to only 140 characters. It allows you to give information in short statements that can be easily accessed by others.You can choose from a wide variety of sources to follow from friends and relatives to news sites and government agencies.
In the future, I can use Twitter in my classroom to keep my students informed. This information can come directly from me as short reminders or links to web pages. The information can also come from the news feeds of reliable scientific sites, such as, NASA or Popular Mechanics. This is another great way to allow students to individualize their education. Students can choose what feeds to follow based on their own interests or the type of information they are trying to acquire. They can even connect with their peers the classroom to ask questions or give comments about their work.
While reading an article online published by TeachHub, I realize what a great resource Twitter can be with the use of hashtags. I can have students respond to questions and give feedback with the use of a particular hashtag. I then look up these hashtags through my Twitter account and check for understanding in real time without having to individually ask each student to reply, or going through stacks of papers at the end of the day. Hashtags are easy to create and add on to a tweet. Once a hashtag is established, all I would need to do is click on the hashtag and all the tweets containing that hashtag will be displayed. I believe as an educator this is a great way for the students to get involved and monitor their understanding. I believe this will also help students feel a sense of ownership in the classroom.
In the future, I will also use Twitter similar to a discussion board. Students will be encouraged to post questions that they have, and their peers will have the opportunity to respond. This activity will help to create a student-centered learning community that allows the students to have more control over their classroom experience. Student will be able to share information with one another, such as, links to great web pages or video tutorials on YouTube that were helpful. Allowing the students to gather resources not only gives them a sense of belonging, but will assist the teacher in gathering resources. One of my biggest challenges is trying to find resources and activities for the students that are engaging and helpful on my own. It is amazing the resources the students find and share with me. Often a student will show me an app that I would not have been aware of otherwise. Students are always eager to teach me something new!
I also see myself using Twitter in the future to connect with students and parents. Currently my students can access my calendar to see the assignments that we've done by logging into Schoology. Creating a hashtag within Twitter and tweeting a short assignment list for the day would be faster and more convenient for a lot of students. Since most of my students have smartphones, and Twitter can be accessed as an app, believe my students are much more likely to follow my Twitter feed than to login to Schoology and check for announcements. Parents would also appreciate knowing the expectations for their student for the day. This would alleviate a lot of the miscommunication that seems to happen between home and school. It may also eliminate the need for lengthy printed newsletters.
One of the biggest benefits to me as a teacher would be to create a virtual faculty lounge like described in the article from Global Digital Citizen Foundation. This would be where I would engage in a Personal Learning Network with others who are teaching similar subjects. We will tweet about the units we are working on, discuss what went well and maybe what didn't go well. A digital faculty lounge greatly expands my network from a few people that I work with and a couple I know from college into a global society where I can get ideas that stretch far beyond anything that I've seen done in a science classroom to date. Using Twitter you can see others ideas in a manner that is quick and to the point. This overview would help to determine if it is something you want to read further into, in which case we could request links and more information from one another. This is great for teachers who already struggle with time management. I have spent more time than I care to admit reading through lengthy blogs looking for ideas and coming up empty-handed. I would have loved to get a short overview so that I could decide if I wanted to continue with that particular piece of material.
In closing, I think that Twitter is a great resource to use in the classroom. It connects you to others you may not otherwise meet, allows you to stay connected to your students and parents, and allows students freedom to individualize certain aspects of their education. I am excited to try Twitter in the classroom this August!
References:
60 Inspiring Examples of Twitter in the Classroom. (2014). Retrieved July 13, 2016, from https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/60-inspiring-examples-of-twitter-in-the-classroom
Miller, S. (n.d.). 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom. Retrieved July 13, 2016, from http://www.teachhub.com/50-ways-use-twitter-classroom
Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (n.d.). Web 2.0 how-to for educators.
In the future, I can use Twitter in my classroom to keep my students informed. This information can come directly from me as short reminders or links to web pages. The information can also come from the news feeds of reliable scientific sites, such as, NASA or Popular Mechanics. This is another great way to allow students to individualize their education. Students can choose what feeds to follow based on their own interests or the type of information they are trying to acquire. They can even connect with their peers the classroom to ask questions or give comments about their work.
While reading an article online published by TeachHub, I realize what a great resource Twitter can be with the use of hashtags. I can have students respond to questions and give feedback with the use of a particular hashtag. I then look up these hashtags through my Twitter account and check for understanding in real time without having to individually ask each student to reply, or going through stacks of papers at the end of the day. Hashtags are easy to create and add on to a tweet. Once a hashtag is established, all I would need to do is click on the hashtag and all the tweets containing that hashtag will be displayed. I believe as an educator this is a great way for the students to get involved and monitor their understanding. I believe this will also help students feel a sense of ownership in the classroom.
In the future, I will also use Twitter similar to a discussion board. Students will be encouraged to post questions that they have, and their peers will have the opportunity to respond. This activity will help to create a student-centered learning community that allows the students to have more control over their classroom experience. Student will be able to share information with one another, such as, links to great web pages or video tutorials on YouTube that were helpful. Allowing the students to gather resources not only gives them a sense of belonging, but will assist the teacher in gathering resources. One of my biggest challenges is trying to find resources and activities for the students that are engaging and helpful on my own. It is amazing the resources the students find and share with me. Often a student will show me an app that I would not have been aware of otherwise. Students are always eager to teach me something new!
I also see myself using Twitter in the future to connect with students and parents. Currently my students can access my calendar to see the assignments that we've done by logging into Schoology. Creating a hashtag within Twitter and tweeting a short assignment list for the day would be faster and more convenient for a lot of students. Since most of my students have smartphones, and Twitter can be accessed as an app, believe my students are much more likely to follow my Twitter feed than to login to Schoology and check for announcements. Parents would also appreciate knowing the expectations for their student for the day. This would alleviate a lot of the miscommunication that seems to happen between home and school. It may also eliminate the need for lengthy printed newsletters.
One of the biggest benefits to me as a teacher would be to create a virtual faculty lounge like described in the article from Global Digital Citizen Foundation. This would be where I would engage in a Personal Learning Network with others who are teaching similar subjects. We will tweet about the units we are working on, discuss what went well and maybe what didn't go well. A digital faculty lounge greatly expands my network from a few people that I work with and a couple I know from college into a global society where I can get ideas that stretch far beyond anything that I've seen done in a science classroom to date. Using Twitter you can see others ideas in a manner that is quick and to the point. This overview would help to determine if it is something you want to read further into, in which case we could request links and more information from one another. This is great for teachers who already struggle with time management. I have spent more time than I care to admit reading through lengthy blogs looking for ideas and coming up empty-handed. I would have loved to get a short overview so that I could decide if I wanted to continue with that particular piece of material.
In closing, I think that Twitter is a great resource to use in the classroom. It connects you to others you may not otherwise meet, allows you to stay connected to your students and parents, and allows students freedom to individualize certain aspects of their education. I am excited to try Twitter in the classroom this August!
References:
60 Inspiring Examples of Twitter in the Classroom. (2014). Retrieved July 13, 2016, from https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/60-inspiring-examples-of-twitter-in-the-classroom
Miller, S. (n.d.). 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom. Retrieved July 13, 2016, from http://www.teachhub.com/50-ways-use-twitter-classroom
Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (n.d.). Web 2.0 how-to for educators.
Alicia,
ReplyDeleteI like your ideas of using hashtags to track understanding and also using Twitter as a discussion board for students to ask and answer peer questions related to class.
I also have known about Twitter for quite some time and like you, thought it was more like Facebook. I am happy to find out that it can be much more focused on my interests. I have not yet learned how to make a hashtag, but I will be looking into that more soon.
Alicia,
ReplyDeleteI like that you plan to have students use Twitter to keep informed. I really like the fast access to relevant Biology discoveries that Twitter replies. I think though, that it would almost certainly have to be an assignment for them to really interact with Twitter educationally. I could see this being a good Extra Credit project that could potentially be year long. They get extra credit if they join Twitter and follow relevant feeds, but as the year progresses they need to be tweeting about relevant content. I don't know if I'm comfortable yet having that not be extra credit, but it would be a fun assignment.
I also think that if we want to use Twitter to have students respond to in class prompts (which is an awesome idea btw), that they are going to have to have a Twitter account that is exclusively for school. Or we are going to have to have serious conversations about appropriate feeds to follow.
I really like the virtual faculty lounge idea because then you have a group of people "meeting" that are really focused on your topic that are completely new to you! Sounds like an awesome idea, I just wonder how you go about organizing that?
Beth,
ReplyDeleteTo create a hashtag, you simply add a # and then place a short statement behind it, such as, #MrsMidkiff. Then you can search twitter for #MrsMidkiff and every post that was that added to it will appear! It is a very efficient way to see similarly items grouped together.
RE: “ I think that Twitter is a great resource to use in the classroom. It connects you to others you may not otherwise meet, allows you to stay connected to your students and parents, and allows students freedom to individualize certain aspects of their education.”
ReplyDeleteAlicia,
All of the ideas that you mentioned are great ways to incorporate Twitter in your classroom. The 140 character limit makes it not only quick and easy to construct tweets, but also very easy to read and comprehend the tweets. Effective use of links, hashtags, and images can be used to strengthen the message. A well-thought-out tweet is often better than a paragraph of text. Parents and students both appreciate the short messages and the ease of accessing Twitter throughout the day using the app.
Twitter is a great tool for individualized learning for both teachers and students. Many believe that individualized and personalized learning is a large part of the future of education. A growing body of research is confirming that personalized/ individualized learning strategies lead to increases in student achievement. Of course there is more to this type of learning than using Twitter, but Twitter is a great place to start because of its ease of use.
Happy tweeting!
Dr. Dell