Community reviews for Twitter

What makes Twitter such a valuable teaching tool is the diversity of how it can be used. Mainly as a mode of mutual communication, it can be used for additional "office" hours, reminders and announcements, professional collaboration, running a live tweet hashtag stream of classroom learning as it's taking place, not to mention using the tool as a meta-communication tool- allowing students to create fictional accounts relating to characters of study (i.e. "John Proctor" from the Crucible) and create group tweeting experiences that enhance the traditional learning approach in the classroom. (for other ideas, see: http://www.teachhub.com/50-ways-use-twitter-classroom)

Twitter is a great tool for the classroom, whether it is for teacher collaboration, posting vital information or communicating with parents.

While Twitter often seems to be for self-promotion, gossip, or goofy one-liners, there's an increasing population of educators, classrooms & schools that use it to share ideas and connect with others. Students can ask questions of experts, share their successes and failing-up experiences, and connect with peers across the globe. Teachers can learn from colleagues across a diverse user-base and contribute to professional discourse. With only 140-characters available, users have to exercise the art of skillful communication (brevity, clarity, context) while also engaging a desired audience through use of hashtags, lists, handles and other tools. Students can make live tweets or use the constraints in simulated environments. While I think there could be value to having optional content filters for a TwitterEdu, learning to navigate real waters of digital citizenship has tremendous upsides.

Twitter has become and asset in my classroom. There are many ways you can use this resource. It can be used to tweet assignments, extra credit opportunities, scholarly articles, notes from class, etc. It is an easy way to connect with students outside of the classroom to build rapport, as well as, learning about student background knowledge. It also allows you the opportunity to support your students in a positive and public way if you chose to do so.

Taking away sources of information from students is stupid. The knee-jerk reaction to Twitter in a school setting is that it must be bad because it's a social networking product and kids use it on their phones. A lot of school internet filters have it blocked. I like it because it's an efficient way of getting information: news breaks on Twitter now. What could be better than having a classroom full of students who are informed on current issues immediately? Of course, this information transfer can create some problematic situations. It seems like every few months a celebrity death is erroneously reported because someone started a rumor on Twitter. This can be a great teaching tool, however, because it allows students to evaluate sources of information.

I have started a twitter student/teacher account this year. I LOVE it. We have four day school weeks so I have the ability to remind my students of things outside of school. They know I have a twitter and it's a public domain so I post things, and they can see it, but don't necessarily have to give me their information. Some students follow me, but others just check it.

I think this is a fantastic tool for customized information gathering on virtually any topic. Although Twitter is laden with blowhards - of all varieties - it is also surprisingly chalk full of experts from various fields who have taken to Twitter as a way to engage the public, share links to useful information and drive discussion in the "now." Teaching a media literacy class, I find Twitter to be invaluable. Especially in the cases were Twitter breaks a story before any conventional news outlet (Boston marathon bombing). I also find it particularly useful when the Twitter-verse is responsible spreading inaccurate information. Makes for a teachable moment.

I think the possibilities for student use are vast. I love Twitter for my own PD and PLC. As a teacher, my life is always busy and I often feel overwhelmed. The support, information, and strategies I've gotten from Twitter in the last 6 months has been amazing.

Twitter is a great quick way to get out updates, due dates and interesting articles about the college process.

I love using Twitter to share what we are learning in the classroom with parents. I post anchor charts and websites for parents to extend learning into the home. I also post community happenings to encourage involvement. Students tweet to other schools and teachers in our school to encourage writing skills.