We have had a debate about whether or not Twitter is appropriate for use in the classroom. Personally, I do not think I would use this technology because it is too time consuming with no enough educational benefits. On the other hand, it could be useful for school organisations and for parents. Below are some reason for and against Twitter in the classroom context...
Ways to use twitter:
· Use as a privacy system for students to inform teachers about certain issues they may be having (using direct messages) so that it is a communication between the teacher and student only.
· Teacher can tweet a story opener, and each student has to reply by adding a sentence on. Aim is to create a class story.
· Let parents ‘follow’ their students on twitter. A good way for busy parents to have some sort of contribution to their student learning.
· Give students either a story introduction, a character description etc to begin in 140 characters.
· Teacher can tweet out a particular word and students can give either definition, synonyms etc.
· Class studying a story/novel/short story – each student/pair of students is allocated a character and the other characters discuss a particular issue in the point of view of their own character.
· Reflections – what did I learn? What I could do better next time? Etc
The following are Twitter pages used in 3 different schools..
1. http://twitter.com/leamore_primary
2. http://twitter.com/ColintonP6
3. http://twitter.com/KingstonStMary
Limitations:
· Too distracting
· Does not take into consideration students with diverse abilities
· Multitasking increases stress – affects other learning areas
· Reduces ‘on task’ behaviours
· Can go against classroom expectations – courtesy etc
· Easily off task
· Difficult to monitor/regulate
· Time consuming for the teacher
· Difficult to get started
Awesome presentation, you both did really well!
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