Twitter is a microblogging application in which one answers the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. Beyond simply keeping friends and family informed about one’s life, Twitter has applications to politics, marketing, research, professional development, networking, the news, personal learning environments, and yes – you guessed it – education. Twitter’s use in business, professional fields and communication has been very well demonstrated yet creative applications for the classroom are just beginning to emerge. Through the resources and ideas explored in this article, you should be able to apply Twitter as a tool to design relevant instructional experiences for your students with clear expectations for participation.

Twitter’s uses in education are widereaching, from communication, to research, assignments, and story-writing. The large majority of references used in this article were collected over a 3-month span from links shared by a Twitter network. Benefits of using Twitter in the classroom include increased social presence, timely response to student issues, concise writing for an audience, and support for informal learning.

Getting Started

If you are new to Twitter, there are some things to learn before you launch into using it as a teaching tool. If you’re unsure what Twitter is about, start with this video about Twitter in Plain English. Next, become familiar with key concepts, terminology and a few tools for Twitter success with 10 Things you Must Know before using Twitter . Lastly, review 30 Twitter Tips for Teachers for a breakdown on the steps involved in setting up and getting involved with a network. Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool to use for your own learning, and Nine Great Reasons Why Teachers Should Use Twitter presents ideas and use cases to inspire its use for professional development.

Communication

Explore how to keep your students informed, enhance social presence and buid community, foster reflection, gather feedback and connect with others.

Class Updates. Update students and parents about changes to schedules, lesson plans, field trips, assignments, and more. Twitter is especially powerful for this because it can be set up as an SMS with tweets sent directly to (and composed from) cell phones, with the advantage of not needing to know the recipient’s phone numbers (Belshaw, 2007). Similarly, school libraries could use Twitter accounts to broadcast events, new books, announcements and field questions (Francoeur, 2007).

Enchance Social Presence. Twitter can be used to build social presence in the classroom and to “to build the culture of openness and to create closeness among students” – but be sure to start using it early on to gain all the benefits (Melander, 2009).

Record thoughts and reflect. At any time throughout the class, learning can be reflected upon and insights recorded. Groups can share thoughts about their process and update members on progress in real time.

Gather feedback. Ask for feedback when you get stuck thinking of the right word, need a synonymous, or assistance with a decision or approach.

“A student is reading something in the textbook and has a question about the chapter on multimodal learning. She immediately tweets (i.e., posts) her question to the Twitter community, and gets three responses within ten minutes) – two responses from classmates, and one from Joni (her professor). This leads to several subsequent posts, including comments from two practicing professionals” (Dunlap and Lowenthal, 2009).

Connect with and learn from others. Students and connect up with a Twitter penpal in another country, in another school. Have them ask questions for a global perspective like “Most of the children in our class walk to school because so many live nearby, what is the most popular form of transport in your class and why?” (Barrett, 2008).

Class Projects, Group Work & Research

There are many ideas out there for using Twitter that can be customized to one’s personal curriculum. What follows is an assortment of ideas culled from some great in-depth must-read resources like Twenty-Five Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom, Steve Wheeler’s 10 tips in Teaching with Twitter, Jill Gordon’s 100 Serious Twitter Tips for Academics, and 50 Ways to use Twitter in the College Classroom.

Gather Data – Information obtained from one’s network is up-to-date, in real time and from real people. Opinion, life experience, facts related to one’s profession –it’s all fair game. You can collect and collate student opinion by creating a Twitter account dedicated to the topic – ie. H110recession and requesting students to place an @ sign before the account name (this will create a link and trail to track) when they state their opinion. Tip: Create and distribute graphical polls with Twtpoll.

Generate a problem-based learning assignment – Have students ask their network for questions related to their studies, a challenge to pursue or direction on what topics to explore. Be sure to thank whoever participates (Barrett, 2008).

Monitor a topic – Twitter is a powerful news source for both the first-person grassroots and larger media outlets and politicians. Follow key people in the issues you are studying and topics using search.twitter.com or twitterfall.com. Tip: Display the information coming in on your search in real time. There are many widgets for this, or it can be as simple as following the RSS feed for that Twitter account. Set up a track and encourage/help your students to find: a professional, mentors, the news, citizen journalism, a word or phrase (Gordon, 2009).

Collaborative storytelling - Have each student contribute to a story, 140 characters as a time. Publish it to a wiki for further editing by groups.
Take on a role. Students take on the persona and role of a character in a book you are reading, or as the historical figure you are studying. You could even have students engage with each other on Twitter as these personas. A language arts example of this is given in this article Where for art thou Twitter! (Marcinek, 2009).

Conclusion

Twitter’s affordance for just-in-time, contextual synchronous and asynchronous conversation allows for a variety of teaching applications. Caveats to consider include the potential distractions of Twittering during class, size of one’s response rate, privacy (there are other more private microblogging tools available), addictive/time-consuming, factors, faster spread of rumors and spam (Grosseck & Holotescu, 2008). Given the flexibility and opportunities for customizing Twitter to fit one’s needs as reviewed in the resources mentioned here, an application could be found for almost any classroom.

References
Belshaw, D. (2007). Using Twitter with your students. Retrieved July 24, 2009 from http://teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk/index.php/2007/02/15/using-twitter-with-your-students/Barrett, T. (n.d.) Twenty-Five interesting ways to use Twitter in the classroom. Retrieved July 26, 2009 from http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_118cfb8msf8
Barrett, T. (2008). Twitter a Teaching and Learning Tool Retrieved July 25, 2009 from
http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/2008/03/29/twitter-a-teaching-and-learning-tool/Dunlap, J., & Lowenthal, P. (2009). Tweeting the night away: Using Twitter to enhance social presence. Journal of Information Systems Education
Francoeur, S. (2007). Reference services and Twitter. Retrieved July 25, 2009 from http://www.teachinglibrarian.org/weblog/2007/05/reference-services-and-twitter.htmlGordon, J. 100 Serious Twitter tips for academics. Retrieved July 26, 2009 from http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2009/07/21/100-serious-twitter-ti...
Grosseck, G. & Holotescu, C. (2008). Can we use Twitter for educational activities? Retrieved July 26, 2009 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/2286799/Can-we-use-Twitter-for-educational-activitiesHilzfuld. (2009) .Ten things you must know before using Twitter. Retrieved on July 26, 2009 from http://technmarketing.com/web/ten-things-you-must-know-before-using-twitter/
Marcinek, A. (2009). Where for art thou Twitter! Retrieved on July 25, 2009 from http://iteach20.blogspot.com/2009/04/where-for-art-thou-twitter.htmlMelander, N. (2008). 14 days of Twitter part two: “I Love Twitter” Retrieved July 26, 2009 from
http://digitalmindsblogger.blogspot.com/2008/12/14-days-of-twitter-part-two-i-love.html
Schweitzer, K. (2009). 30 Twitter tips for teachers. Retrieved on July 26, 2009 from http://www.sywtt.com/?p=1685
Unknown. (2009). 50 Ways to use Twitter in the college classroom. Retrieved July 26, 2009 from
http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2009/06/08/50-ways-to-use-twitter-in-the-college-classroom/
Unknown. Twtpoll – Create Twitter Polls. Retrieved Aug 9, 2009 from http://www.twtpoll.comWalker, L. (2009). Nine great reasons why teachers should use Twitter. Retreived July 26, 2009 from http://mrslwalker.com/index.php/2009/03/29/nine-great-reasons-why-teachers-should-use-twitter/Wheeler, S. (2009). Teaching with Twitter. Retrieved July 25, 2009 from http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/01/teaching-with-twitter.html