With the upcoming Social Media and Teaching workshop (have you registered yet?), it seemed like a good time to raise some ideas about how Twitter could be used for teaching. I know, 140 characters or fewer does not seem like it would be conducive to teaching. There are, however, a whole lot of ways to use Twitter that are pedagogically sound, depending on your personal style, the course you teach, and your students.

• Create your own Twitter account as a way to be available for student questions or comments. Yes, it is yet another channel of communication, but it can be pretty easy to manage if you use Twitter on your smartphone or use TweetDeck or Hootsuite. If you follow your students and they follow you, they could even send you a private direct message. Just be clear about expectations
• Use Twitter to share relevant articles, blogs, thoughts with your students (and other academics). (Check out a service like bit.ly or tinyurl to make web addresses more sharable and not lose so many characters.)
• Have your students tweet a paper topic to help them narrow down their focus. 140 characters means they have to be clear about their topic, concise, and ready to go. It could even get them responses from the wider twitterverse if the topic sparks something.
• Make a hashtag for a course to let students share questions, clarify information and communicate with one another outside of class. You could also set up something like GroupTweet if students feel uncomfortable sharing their Twitter names. You can then monitor the hashtag and see what is happening, respond to questions, etc. It could even draw in people from outside your class.
• Set up time during class for students to tweet thoughts and questions. This could lead to some good peer-instruction moments and allow you to see if you need to adjust, go over something, or clarify something even if students are not comfortable raising their hands or speaking out in front of others.
• Get students to create Twitter accounts related to class material and use them to Tweet a project. e.g., a fictional character, a famous scientist, an atom, someone from history, someone at a particular event, etc. This becomes a public project and students can see what other students are doing. It could even be done as a group. It’s a chance to think within a situation and be creative.
• Have one student each class tweet “notes” for the class. It can be saved using something like Storify and used by students who missed the class or others who want to clarify their ideas. This can pass around the class and be a way to get students thinking about the notes. You can also check to see if they need clarification.
• Get students to respond to a question or idea outside of class using Twitter. This allows for discussion-on-the-go and can get students thinking before they come to class or after they leave.
• Try a backchannel. This might work as a break during class, or outside class. Or you might want to use it during a guest lecture or other lecture. Even if you feel like students aren’t paying direct attention to what’s happening, they are focusing on the topic at hand. Just try to have someone monitoring this in case it derails or a response is needed.
• Have “guests” join your class by Twitter. This could be asking someone to respond to a question, could be an open invitation to Twitter, or could be someone you know who is seeded into a discussion. It’s a chance for students to hear from someone other than you.

These are just some of the ways Twitter could be used in a classroom. So how are you using Twitter to teach? If you aren’t, are there particular concerns you have that keep you from trying it?

Tags: classroom, comunication, teaching, tech, twitter