Social Media in Education - Twitter

How many of you have experimented with using Twitter?  I'll admit, I first set up a Twitter account a few years ago, played with it for a while, and lost interest.  I jumped back in about a year or so ago when I had an idea for a purposeful way to use it... I use Twitter now to follow ed tech related organizations and individuals and stay on top of the news in the field.  It's pretty great for that purpose - tweets are very short (up to 140 characters) so they're quick and easy to read, and when I see something interesting, I click the link and go to the article to read more.  I also share interesting things I read and have amassed about 80 followers to date.  I've found a use for Twitter that works for me - it helps me get news quickly and easily.

I'm now convinced that there is a useful purpose to Twitter, not just random people posting what they're doing at any given moment.  I'll be honest - there's lots of garbage out there, just like anywhere else on the internet, but you decide who you follow so you only see the tweets you want to see.  There are good things you can do with Twitter that can help your students and also help you professionally. There are many cool things you can do... you could set up a class #hashtag that students can use to ask you questions or chat with each other (a hashtag is a quick way to flag a tweet for easy searching), class discussions can be held outside of class using Twitter, and you can link Twitter to your Canvas account, too.

I could go on and list a bunch of options for using Twitter, but Edudemic created a great list of 100 uses for Twitter in the classroom that contains links to other blogs and sites with more information.  Check out their list to learn more if you're interested in this topic.  And if you're interested in learning more about ed tech, follow me on Twitter @AmberVaill. Hope to see you there!