I love the idea of using Twitter in the classroom, simply because I feel any connection you can make in the classroom to students' lives outside your room, particularly their ever-important "social lives," the more enthusiastic they become about school in general. While I don't feel Twitter is a great venue for my beginning French classes, for reasons I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to share something my colleague has developed in some of his lessons.
My colleague across the hall teaches 7th grade Social Studies, and because we leave our doors open (and he is incredibly loud), I typically overhear his entire lesson. When I heard him do this, I ran across the hall to ask him about it. Instead of using Twitter as the online tool that it is, the teacher took advantage of the fact that almost all students know Twitter, understand how it works, and are familiar with its features (hash tags, "what's trending," etc).
When his students are learning a new topic in class (for example they just began their unit on religion in society), the teacher will have them do an "exit tweet" on their way out. The question will be something like "What religion are you most interested in learning about and why?" Students will then write on their exit slip (keeping their response under 140 characters of course!) an answer to their question, as well as one or two "hash tags." A sample response might be:
I can't wait to learn about Hinduism bc they have many gods. #hindu #polytheism
This particular teacher has a whole section of his board where he lists "what's trending" after looking over students' responses and hash tags. Cool, huh??
This is a neat idea, and students don't have to go online to do it. I wonder why he just doesn't use Twitter if his students have mobile devices with them. Then he would have electronic copy, which he could convert to Storify (storify.com) and hang on the board or project via the computer. Still, it is a neat idea, even if he is doing it with paper. He could also use an app like Socrative or a website like Infuse Learning. The assessment at the end of class no matter how he does it is a good way to engage students and plan for the next lesson.
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