T WITTER : E FFECTIVE IN THE CLASSROOM ? Virginia Waters

W HAT IS T WITTER ? A 140 character “microblog” You tweet about whatever you’d like Started out with people tweeting mundane things Has evolved to a more useful tool You find other people on twitter and “follow” their tweets You can follow tweets on your homepage, but most people use a “twitter client” like Tweetdeck so you don’t have to go to twitter.com. Tweets pop-up on your screen.

WHY IS SOCIAL LEARNING IMPORTANT? 90% of college students visit social networking sites on a regular basis Social learning is learners learning from each other Today's students want to document their feelings and insights in a highly timely manner Social learning can increase comprehension of material and create new channels for students to learn. Source: in-education-%E2%80%93-the-bright-side

C HALLENGES Many instructors are interested in learning how to add social media tools into their curriculum, but they aren’t sure how. Social media sites can be a huge distraction for students who aimlessly click through sites. It can be challenging to find ways to incorporate activities with social media that promote actual learning.

D O NOT JUST USE SOCIAL MEDIA FOR THE SAKE OF IT ! The learning objective is most important. Social media is a tool to help teach a concept so be sure to not lose sight of the learning for the cool factor. Choose 1 tool to start and make it purposeful. Research the social media product and how best to implement it in the classroom.

T WITTER 101 Twitter allows you to post your ideas in just 140 characters Letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation and spaces all count as characters on Twitter. What all of this means is, you have to be concise. You have to know exactly what you want to say, and say it in as few words as possible.as few words as possible Source: writing/

T WITTER H OMEPAGE

A DDITIONAL I NFO ON T WITTER You can follow people who are tweeting about an event by using the hashtag Ex: #pharaohs Ex: #Napoleon Your tweets will go out to everyone who is following you, but you can indicate that a tweet is intended for a specific person by using symbol at the beginning of your tweet (however, everyone following you will still see If you are following someone and that person is following you, then you can send a direct message to only that person using letter D and the person’s twitter name: D watersWH101

H OW TO S ET U P T WITTER FOR Y OUR C LASS 1. Set up a twitter username for your class: Ex: watersWH Tell your students to create a twitter account, then go to and follow you 3. Then anything you tweet will go out to all of your students 4. Tell your students to put #watersWH101 at the end of their tweets so that everyone can set up a search column called #watersWH101 in Tweetdeck This way students can easily see anything that other students tweet about Tweets can also be received on mobile phones

W HAT W OULD W E T WEET A BOUT ? Websites or other resources relevant to class that you come upon Students can comment on resources you’ve found and all other students see these comments as well (like a discussion thread that is “on the go” Students can send messages like this as well Thoughts that occur to you after class that you forgot to mention Remind students about assignments, due dates, etc. Students can follow experts on twitter and “ re-tweet ” what these experts say so that everyone in class can read the quote (and decided to follow this expert if they wish)

W HAT W OULD W E T WEET A BOUT ? Be radical: encourage twittering during class: Do in-class surveys (semi-anonymous if you or your “twitter monitor” reports the class results to your question) Ask quiz questions Tweets could be projected onto the wall, or You designate your twitter monitor to surface questions to you A way to get participation from shy students

C LASS I MPLEMENTATION OF TWITTER Approximately 120 students World History Grades 9-12, majority 10 th Age range years old

RESULTS Some students would not follow Students who did follow did not tweet about subject or material covered in class While the students seem very interested in social media, they were not interested in participating Some students do not have access to internet Some students have limited data packages Did not reach the students I wanted to reach the most

CHALLENGES How do I connect with all students? How can I make this type of connection mandatory? What positive changes can I make to motivate all students to participate? What other social media outlets are available?

C OMMENTS /S UGGESTIONS What do you use as an effective social media tool in the classroom/workplace? Have you found that any one works better than others?