Twitter in the classroom

Twitter should not be intimidating to educators or administers.  We need to demonstrate to our students the same curiosity and enthusiasm we expect from them when teaching a new material.  The life- longer learner is not something that can be taught in a lesson, it has to be modeled and embraced.  In the Langwitches blog, they discuss how educators wanted to embrace this new technology but where hesitant to make that initial step.  In the world that we live in today, we cannot write off new technology as a fad- we need to at least dip our feet in the pond.  By testing the waters we can discover as community, the true value of new technology- remember you are not alone!

Moving on, one really great idea that I found about using twitter was interacting with characters of a novel, on twitter.  In Hanniewelch's blog, blog-o-licious she goes in depth about her experience of using twitter in her methods class to design a lesson.  While the students were reading a novel- Harry Potter and the Socerer's stone, they would be able to tweet to characters from the novel.  She added that the lesson could be even better if they used twitter as a reading log- by having their tweets linked to a discussion.  Even if the students were not that excited to read the book, they could become more excited about the material if they were able to interact with the characters, so that the characters become more relevant in their lives.  Take the plunge- look or tweet Lord Voldemort7 at @Lord_Voldemort7 !


Look to see if other characters are on twitter- maybe first just show your students their page.  After a while, go for it! Lurk, tweet, hashtag, twitpic do it all!