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I am an instructional designer and educational researcher at BYU's Center for Teaching & Learning. I spend my time thinking about all things educational and eternal... though I spend a little too much time lately with technology, especially social media.

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Teaching and Learning with Twitter

I am not the first to write on this topic (for example, see Resources & References below), nor will I likely be the last. At the risk of sounding like a media-centric designer (Gibbons, 2003), I want to share some thoughts and resources regarding the educational potential of Twitter.

A Little about Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging application. Micro-blogging is like blogging but your posts are limited to 140 characters in length (called "tweets"). There are also several other subtle differences. This video explains some of the basics of Twitter (I really like Common Craft’s “In Plain English” series, by the way!):

Here are some things you should know to interact on Twitter:

  • SMS (Short Message Standard – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS) is the standard that Twitter uses… this allows you to send and receive tweets from your cellphone (if you need to know more ask someone more techno-saavy than myself!).
  • @username: used to reply (especially if used at the beginning of a tweet) or mention another person in the Twiterverse.
  • Retweets – use RT at the beginning of a tweet to pass on something someone else already tweeted (followed by a mention of the person), although Twitter has a new retweet function (some people hate how the retweet functionality works, but it doesn’t cost you any characters, which is nice). Any way, a retweet is kind of like a compliment (usually).
  • D for Direct message (but you can just go to the Direct Message area to send as well. Direct messages are more private (but don’t really plan on privacy, although you can lock your tweets).
  • Hashtags (# followed by a word) can be use to tag a tweet. Hash tags are used to create a back channel or conversation on a topic/event, etc. and facilitate searching, for example to look up tweets about things the character Monk often says you can search for #Monkisms.
  • URL Shorteners: Although not officially a part of Twitter, bit.ly and tinyurl.com, etc. come in handy. Some URLs can take up more than your 140 characters so shortening comes in handy! (this is often built into many Twitter Clients)
  • Lists: A way to organize those you follow however you want. Say you want to follow those who research social media you could create a list and add people to your list (you don’t even have to follow them). You can also follow others lists (and others can follow yours). For example, I have a pretty fun list regarding college football: http://twitter.com/#/list/michaelcjohnson/college-football (see socialmediatoday for an article by Harry Hoover on uses of Twitter lists: http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/162925)
  • Twitter Clients: Allow you to manage your twitter account (and often other social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn). Examples include Tweetdeck, HootSuite, etc. And there are many such apps that are available for your mobile phone.

You can also form groups through Apps like Twibes (http://twibes.com) but that is a subject for another day…

Educational Uses of Twitter

For Teaching (In and out of the Classroom)

  • Engaging students in discussions in large group classes
  • Conduct out of class discussions
  • Using as a backchannel during lecture
  • Polling
  • Providing students additional resources and current event related to course topic (an idea from my boss Larry Seawright)
  • Sharing learning experiences across distances in small manageable chunks
  • Summarizing/synthesize articles or other media precisely
  • Word a Day in New Language (or to expand native language vocabulary)
  • Help connect Students with people of other languages, viewpoints, perspectives, etc.
  • And so forth…

For Learning (Personal Learning Environments- PLEs/Professional Development)

  • Researching a topic (search for topics, ask questions of your followers, use a hastag to broadcast to users looking at the same topic, etc.)
  • Creating a learning network (follow and be followed by people with similar interests)
  • Sharing of articles and other media relevant to course topic
  • Asking questions
  • Seeking help or advise on a project (from Clif Mims)
  • Requesting and sharing resources
  • Sharing blog posts
  • Following leading thinkers in your field
  • Sharing what you are learning in a course, at a conference, etc.
  • Reflecting on your learning (Educause, 7 Things You Should Know about Twitter)
  • Taking notes in class (see Using Twitter for Educational Purposes)
  • And so forth…

Here is a presentation from Tom Barret @tombarret on 29 educational uses of Twitter (there are some gems in here):

http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_118cfb8msf8 (Here is the direct link to the above presentation!)


And here are some great ideas from Steve Wheeler on educational uses of Twitter:

”1. ‘Twit Board’ Notify students of changes to course content, schedules, venues or other important information.

2. ‘Summing Up’ Ask students to read an article or chapter and then post their brief summary or précis of the key point(s). A limit of 140 characters demands a lot of academic discipline.

3. ‘Twit Links’ Share a hyperlink – a directed task for students – each is required to regularly share one new hyperlink to a useful site they have found.

4. ‘Twitter Stalking’ Follow a famous person and document their progress. Better still if this can be linked to an event (During the recent U.S. Presidential elections, many people followed @BarackObama and kept up to date with his speeches, etc).

5. ‘Time Tweet’ Choose a famous person from the past and create a twitter account for them – choose an image which represents the historical figure and over a period of time write regular tweets in the role of that character, in a style and using the vocabulary you think they would have used (e.g. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar).

6. ‘Micro Meet’ Hold discussions involving all the subscribing students. As long as everyone is following the whole group, no-one should miss out on the Twitter stream. All students participate because a sequence of contributors is agreed beforehand.

7. ‘Micro Write’ Progressive collaborative writing on Twitter. Students agree to take it in turns to contribute to an account or ‘story’ over a period of time.

8. ‘Lingua Tweeta’ Good for modern language learning. Send tweets in foreign languages and ask students to respond in the same language or to translate the tweet into their native language.

9. ‘Tweming’ Start off a meme – agree on a common hash-tag so that all the created content is automatically captured by Twemes or another aggregator.

10. ‘Twitter Pals’ Encourage students to find a Twitter ‘penpal’ and regularly converse with them over a period of time to find out about their culture, hobbies, friends, family etc. Ideal for learning about people from other cultures.”

Educations Projects/Initiatives

Here are a couple of educational projects I am aware of that use Twitter, if you know of others let me know and I will add them:

Tools

Twitter Clients:

Accessories:

For more twitter related tools, see Top 100 Tools for Twittering Teacher (from Best Colleges Online).

Concluding Thoughts

Twitter, although on the surface is quite simple – post a thought in 140 characters or less, it can be a quite powerful teaching and learning tool. However, I would encourage teachers, instructional designers, and learners alike to be thoughtful about using Twitter or any technology. Technology for technology’s sake is seldom a good idea. It could be argued that the need to learn to use Twitter might be enough of a reason to use it or because microblogging can be engaging. I am not telling you what reasons are good enough. But if Twitter is the right tool for the job, I think it can be powerful…

References & Resources

How have you used Twitter in your courses/classes? Share your ideas for using Twitter … or if you know of any exceptional resources that are not listed here, please share! Especially of interest would be studies that show that using Twitter really helped improve students’ learning experience!

Posted by Michael Johnson 

4 comments

Jan 14, 2010
Clif Mims said...
This is a thorough post of this topic, Michael. I hope your students will really dive in and give Twitter a thorough review. It took me about six weeks to understand the benefits of "the network."Now my PLN is a vital part of my professional development.

I look forward to connecting with your students. I'm @clifmims on Twitter and other networks, too.

Jan 14, 2010
Rodd Lucier said...
Maybe you'd consider adding some of these ideas & resources, and listing yourself as a co-author at http://twitterforteachers.com
Jan 14, 2010
Michael Johnson said...
Clif, I appreciate your comments, I'll be sure to share them with those in the class. I have come to see more and more value in networking! Twitter has been an important part of that.

Rodd, I will definitely consider that idea... and thanks for sharing another great resource!

Feb 05, 2010
Michael Johnson said...
Another idea I came across, ironically on Twitter, on using Twitter for just-in-time teaching, here is the idea in the tweeter's own words (well it was really retweeted): facultyfocus

"RT @busynessgirl: Great idea for in-class twitter use: Tweet a couple questions b4 class. Students answer when they log in at beg of class." - via @facultyfocus.

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