Twitter In Education

Twitter has become one of the fastest growing applications on the web, its popularity is the same as Facebook and instant messaging.  But how can it be used in an education setting?

 One of the benefits of Twitter is that it can be used to reach a multitude of people all at once.  For an educator this is a great tool to help their students keep track of when projects and assignments are due.   As a matter of fact that’s what we use it for in the class that I teach.  Every Wednesday morning I send out a “tweet” to my classes letting them know what is due and when and encouraging them to contact me should they have any questions on their projects or assignments.

 As a peer-to-peer tool Twitter can also be used as a great collaboration tool.  It can be used to keep in contact and organize meeting times with other group members should they have a group projects.  They can also use it to ask questions from each other should be it a quick question that requires a short answer.  Setting up a group Twitter in some ways is also easier then setting up a group IM.

 While there are other educational uses of Twitter it does have its drawbacks.  The 140 character limit makes it difficult to give an in-depth answer to a question should one be required.  While I do use to in my class I would prefer a student to contact me via e-mail, IM, or phone should they have a question.   Some “tweets” may also be taken the wrong way.  If a person was making a joke the other group members may not realize that and become angry over it.  To be fair to Twitter though this is a problem that is inherent with all forms of electronic communication.  Lastly an educator needs to make sure that Twitter is being used properly.   Students that have access to it in a classroom may be using to hold conversation with their friends and not paying attention to the teacher.

Twitter Tweets for Higher Education

This article discusses some of the benefits and drawbacks of using Twitter for education.   It contains additional links to other articles about Twitter and education and links to an interesting article on how libraries are using Twitter.

Twitter for Academia

Another great article on how Twitter can be used in education.  Has a great idea on how to use it as writing assignment, whereby one student starts a story and other students continue it.  The 140 character limit is a great way to do a writing assignment like this.  One thing I did like about this article is the authors concern that Twitter is just another form of “sound bite communication” and that the character limit limits nuanced communication.

Potential Uses of Twitter in an Educational Source

This article discusses more ways in which Twitter can be used in education.  The one that caught my attention was setting up a course group to keep in contact with your students.

Can We Use Twitter For Educational Activities

This article discusses how a Twitoshphere can be used in education by offering an example of how they applied to the Romanian Twitosphere.  Also goes over the benefits and drawbacks that I discussed in my opening statement.  As a side note I was also introduced to scribd.com which looks to be a website where books and papers can be shared, but that’s a different post for another time…

Social Survey: Twitter for Higher Ed Marketing

I included this article not necessarily for the info on how Twitter can be applied to education but for the statement “Some ideas have been thrown around about using Twitter for Higher Education marketing, but the reality is Twitter is a toy for internet techies to communicate. The rest of the world isn’t really using this resource yet.”  I noticed that this article is over a year old and in that time Twitter has grown to a very large and accepted form of communication.