How Use Twitter In and Out of the Classroom

Twitter, one of the well-known social media sites, could be a surprisingly useful educational tool. It gives students and teachers an easy way to communicate besides office hours and classrooms. With the use of hashtags (#), it becomes incredibly easy to find any interesting topic discussion or related information in twitter. Recently, more and more teachers create Twitter accounts or lists specific to a course, making it easy for students to follow and find each other on Twitter.

Social media in general can completely change the way that students submit and receive their assignments, using tools such as Flickr, YouTube and a blogging platform, like WordPress or Blogspot. Twitter can also replace many tools you already use such as mailing lists for announcements and discussion board for class content.

Send reminders

Twitter can be used to remind students about homework and assignments, and provide relevant information for their next class. Using Twitter on a smartphone ensures that students receive notifications and can keep pace with the latest class news. For example, teachers can use twitter as attendance reminder: for students who have trouble making it to class on time, send reminders before school to get them in the door earlier ( 60 Inspiring Examples of Twitter in the Classroom ).

Share articles and videos

We all know how share interesting links with our followers on Twitter. Teachers can use this to their advantage by tweeting interesting educational materials for their students to read or watch. Sending out a tweet to give students a reading assignment or videos is an instantaneous way to keep them prepared for their class ahead of time.
Twit TV is a useful tool  to share videos with students on twitter. Med Kharbach mentioned it in his blog: "this is a cool web tool that automatically plays trending videos shared on Twitter. It also provides some practical tools such as being able to search for videos based on region and topic or even skip the ones you don't like." ( Great Twitter Tools For Your Professional Development ). Teachers can raise questions and trigger discussion based on reading and watching assignment.

Teachers can collaborate

Teachers can easily collaborate with each other on Twitter too, exchanging ideas and teaching tools. With the use of a hashtag, it’s easy for any group of people to connect on Twitter so why not teachers? The search of related hashtags, such as #edtech, gives you instant access to links, thoughts and tweets from educators from all over the world.

Encourage creativity

Twitter can be used as a means to encourage students creativity in writing short article such as the micropeom. Twitter is the perfect tool to convey a concept or story with as few words as possible. It can also be a great way to put collaborative creativity to work. Students can create a story taking turns to contribute one line each.

Keep the discussion going

In a classroom setting, Twitter can be used to contribute to a discussion, and also gives students and teachers a way to keep the conversation going long after the class is over.