As Twitter becomes a global phenomenon, it is no wonder why businesses, organizations, and teachers are creating screen names and joining in on the activity. Where else can you market your ideas for free? Where else can you educate people about a noteworthy cause? Where else can you share great ideas that work in your classroom? Twitter is helping people of all walks of life interact and share ideas because it is fast, convenient, and information is constantly being added and transmitted to the public.
Twitter allows teachers to follow other educators and read their tweets about classroom activities, books to read in class, professional development dates coming up, etc. If you are interested in a topic, there is someone out there who will tweet lots of useful information regarding that topic which you can tweak and incorporate into ones own classroom. It is free resources at your fingertips. Better yet, you can respond to an article, ask a question regarding the topic, or share the article with friends who follow you. Twitter is as educational as you want it to be. The more time invested in finding great resources and tweeting other educators, the more successful your lessons will be.
Not only can Twitter be used as a professional resource, but many teachers are incorporating Twitter into lessons in the classroom. In the blog Twitter, by Purdue University Students, they suggest using Twitter as a simple form of communication between home and school. For instance, the teacher can tweet homework to remind students, or useful links that students may want to refer to for extra reinforcement. Students can also tweet thoughts or opinions on books they are reading, or questions if they need clarification. The teacher can also pose extra credit questions and the first to tweet back gets bonus points. In the blog post, You are Now Entering the Twitterverse by blog-o-licious, the post talks about using Twitter as a great way to get feedback and information first hand from authors of books you are reading in class. Students can pose questions and/or comment and get feedback from the person behind the pages. Likewise, students can create Twitter names for characters in the book and tweet in the characters voice, and playing around with language if it is from a different time period. The possibilities for active learning using Twitter are endless, and it is only a tweet away!
