Simple way for teachers and students to communicate in a blog-like format.
Community Review for Twiducate
My Take
Here are the two major drawbacks I can see with this app:
- Students should not be able to take down their own posts
- Teachers should have the ability to approve student posts
*I understand the idea is to post immediately, emulating social media
I made a test student account, and I am really pleased to see that there is a set of avatars students can pre-select. I am still worried students would be able to post without my knowing and take their post down again before I see it. I don't like that.
How I Use It
I enjoy using this app as a landing page for students as we discuss concepts in our classes. This application promotes student voice, and is easily embedded in class routines. It's a great alternative to Google Classroom's "Question" option, which offers somewhat of a forum, but not like Twiducate does. When teaching with Twiducate, there is a bit of setup required for student accounts, but this is ideal because it protects student privacy. Students are not intimidated by this app because of how simple the layout is, and there is an elevated sense of "everyone can see what I'm thinking".
I know I wish that students can post on this app immediately instead of having the teacher approve posts (like Edublogs does). I think normalizing posting immediately can actually be very healthy for students. When students are using social media at home, many of them do not "check in" with anyone before posting online.
One thing I'm also impressed with is that Twiducate is compatible with the Google Read&Write Chrome extension. This is extremely valuable for students who have more barriers with composing text on the computer. I like the simplicity of this website, I like that there isn't too much going on. I think this is comparable to Moodle or Canvas, but I think this is very user-friendly for teachers to initiate on their own.