Twitter in the Classroom!

One of the things I learned from the people I follow is that there are many resources out there at our fingertips. On Scholastic Teachers (@ScholasticTeach) it gave a lesson plan idea on what is happening with Sandy and it's effects of it. These tweets are current and help us teachers provide current events to students, so that they know about what is going on in the world around them. I have been following tweets from local media, educational organizations, and educators. Personally, twitter for me is a great QUICK resource to use to be up to date on what is going on in the world around us. One can easily attach a link to their twitter and it includes only 140 characters so reading the tweets is not overwhelming as other social networking might be to some.

At first I have never thought of using twitter in the classroom, but after reading some of the articles it included many great ideas that I could start using in my classroom as of Monday. I will mention my top 3 favorite ideas I read from Steve Wheeler that seem doable in any classroom.

1. ‘Summing Up’: Ask students to read an article or chapter and then post their brief summary or précis of the key point(s). 

I would love to use this in my classroom to teach summary. Many times my students have a difficult time with it comes to having to summarize books they have read. They like to include too many details that are irrelevant. But, their task would be to only include information that happened in the beginning, middle, and end.

2. ‘Time Tweet’: Choose a famous person from the past and create a twitter account for them – choose an image which represents the historical figure and over a period of time write regular tweets in the role of that character, in a style and using the vocabulary you think they would have used (e.g. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar). 

I feel that most teachers in elementary have a hard time incorporating social studies into their curriculum that many times it gets left behind. But, with incorporating Twitter and Social Studies the students will have a lot of fun and more of it can be done in the classroom. I like the idea of assigning the students to take the role of a historical figure and pretend that they are them and twitting ideas and facts about that individual. This will really allow the teacher to see what the student has learned about that person.

3. ‘Twitter Pals’ Encourage students to find a Twitter ‘penpal’ and regularly converse with them over a period of time to find out about their culture, hobbies, friends, family etc. Ideal for learning about people from other cultures. 

Having twitter palls will give the students an opportunity to build a community with other students in the same grade level, school, community, or state. Depending how the teacher wants to do it. 

Wheeler, S. Teaching With Twitter. Retrieved November 3, 2012, from http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/01/teaching-with-twitter.html.