Twitter for Teaching

An interesting read, Amanda Wynter’s article Bringing Twitter to the Classroom shows a high school English teacher experimenting with integrating Twitter into his classroom. He does ultimately seem to have success, and students appear to have been more engaged and interested in participating in discussion when given the opportunity to do so online.

There are quite a few interesting observations about having students use Twitter throughout the article. In particular, I liked the part about how students could “utilize their experiences in English class and include their class hashtags as they responded to tweets from One Direction and Tim Tebow.” This allows the teacher to measure students' comprehension and application of concepts introduced in class. The opportunity to directly connect students back to class during their leisure time is certainly attractive, but could also be difficult in terms of winning over reluctant parents who may be particularly protective of students’ online activity. I also liked the idea of this teacher sharing students’ tweets to his network of education-oriented followers to favorite and reply to students’ ideas. Not only would it be a great opportunity to practice for a language class, but students can also experience their ideas being thought worth reading by other people out in the real world.

Searching for more ideas about how to make use of Twitter as a teacher, I came across 60 Inspiring Examples of Twitter in the Classroom by Global Digital Citizen Foundation. It’s a pretty straightforward list of (you guessed it) 60 links to examples of ways to implement Twitter into a class. They’re split into sections like Communication, Organization, Resources, Writing Skills, and Twitter Exercises. Many seem obvious, but there are a few that stuck out as clever.

I like the ideas of having students follow public figures or news agencies for easily digestible news summaries, network with native speakers who share interests, and build a foreign language content stream. I also liked the idea of teachers connecting their classes to exchange foreign language practice. Twitter is a great way for the language learner to practice because each post is limited to 140 characters, so students never have to struggle with staring at a big page of foreign language. They can feel good about understanding and being understood more easily in such concise messages. Using any of these activities over Twitter seems like it would be a smart way to get students to practice outside the classroom.

In addition to the social networking benefits teachers enjoy when growing a professional network, there are also many possibilities for language learners to improve by making direct use of a global communication tool like Twitter.