Using Twitter to promote discussion
Introduction
Twitter is a free micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets answer the fundamental question “what are you doing?” In its most simplistic form this can be a one or two word answer, but when developed this is a tool that lends itself to developing understanding and starting collaboration. Conversation and collaboration can be carried out in real time (synchronous) or over time (asynchronous). It is often described as filling the gap between email and instant messaging. Each message or ‘tweet’ is no more than 140 characters in length. Many messages use text speak in a similar way to SMS. To use Twitter, you need access to the internet either from a computer or mobile phone. If your school has blocked twitter.com, you can access the site from a mobile phone and forward interesting links to your email inbox. An alternative to use within your classroom is Edmoto.
Who uses Twitter?
Much of the media noise around Twitter concerns its use by celebrities (e.g. Stephen Fry). However, increasing numbers of businesses and politicians are using Twitter as a marketing tool. The US election in 2008 was heavily influenced by the use of Social Networking in general and Twitter in particular. At the end of 2009, more than 100 UK MPs were using Twitter to communicate with their constituents. Many educators (particularly in the US and Australia) are using Twitter to keep abreast of new developments in education and exchange ideas with people in a similar field around the world.
How can I use Twitter?
Twitter can be used in a multitude of ways:
To Develop Your Own Teaching Practice
- Develop your own knowledge by sharing ideas, opinions and resources from a group of people that you have chosen to follow.Reflect on your practice and compare and contrast with experiences of other educators in your group.
- Keep up to date with news and important changes in your field by following appropriate influencers and media outlets.
- Learn to speak the same language as your pupils.
As a Learning Tool
- Ask your Twitter network to tell you and your pupils something about where they are eg. Location, Temperature, Historical fact. Use the information to do further research, ask more questions, discuss the results or compare and contrast answers. The learning is based on up to date information with a real story and encourages higher order thinking skills (Bloom’s Taxonomy).
- Use Twitterfall to look at what is being said about a relevant topic e.g. global warming. Clicking on links can give you more information about the topic or you may want to ask the tweeter more questions.
- Build up a story in the classroom using 140 characters. You could tweet the parts of the story and ask your followers for feedback.
- Collaborate with other schools to allow pupils to share information, ask questions about a topic, or help each other with a topic. Collaboration could be across geographical boundaries or across year groups.
- Find an expert who would be willing to talk to your pupils on Twitter. e.g. NASA has many accounts including @NASA_SDO_Edu who supports Science teachers.
- Encourage your pupils to tweet about a homework task they are working on. You can see how your learners are developing in their learning and how they use the responses.
- Encourage your pupils to work collaboratively on a task using Twitter to share links and ideas.
Within Your School development
Using a protected Twitter account:
- School administrators can use Twitter to keep parents up to date with school activities in real time. The emphasis is on the parent to follow and check their twitter updates.
- Set up a class account and ask pupils to follow you. Use this to remind pupils when homework is due and respond to questions about homework.
- Set up a class account and invite parents to follow you. You can keep parents informed about what the class is doing and they might like to interact.
- Use Twitter on your school trip – parents can see how pupils are getting on, photos can be uploaded and it becomes a permanent log of the trip.
Get started with Twitter
How to get started
- Create an account at www.twitter.com. Add a picture of yourself.
- People like to see who they are talking to.
- Find people to follow (see below).
- Start conversations with people about their interests.
- Share links to things of interest.
- As you increase the number of people you follow it becomes difficult to manage on the Twitter home page. There are various Twitter services to help, such as HootSuite.
Twitter Language
- An update is called a Tweet. It is 140 characters long. You can tweet as often as you want.
- Following somebody on Twitter simply means receiving their Twitter updates. You will receive a message in your Twitter home page in real time, every time the person you are following posts a message.
- To reply to a follower and/or mention them in your tweet, use @.
- Remember, every tweet you write can be seen by the ‘whole world’, but chances are only your followers will care about it.
- To send a ‘direct message’ or Tweet that only the intended recipient will see, use D at the start of your message.
- To follow somebody, click on their name and press ‘follow’. If you no longer want to receive their updates, click ‘unfollow’ or ‘block’ to stop them following you.
- Links to websites in your tweets are automatically shortened to reduce characters.
- RT or retweet is a way of ‘forwarding’ interesting tweets to your followers.
- Hashtags # are used to tag tweets and make searching easier. Hashtags are often used in conferences to group all relevant tweets.
Followers
Find people to follow by:
- Searching by name for people you know on Twitter.
- Follow people that the people you know are following.
- Use search.twitter.com or tweepsearch.com and search with keywords.
- Use directories, for example http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com/ is an international directory of teachers on Twitter.
- The Twitter account of @futurelabedu contains lists of UK schools and teachers using Twitter and lists of education news outlets.
Why not try...
Historical Tweets
- Look at www.historical.tweets.com to get some ideas about how famous people might have summarised their ideas/ experiences in 140 characters.
- Ask your pupils to produce a Tweet dialogue between two opposing characters in a key situation or summarise a topic in 140 characters.
Tweet a Day
- Create a protected Twitter account for your classroom, invite your parents to follow you.
- Encourage each child to take it in turns to tweet what is happening in your classroom that day.
