Why Should We Use Twitter in the Classroom?

Twitter has been a growing craze in all areas of society for several years now.  Children are using this is a means of communication between friends, adults are using it as an opportunity to interact with other adults that share common interests and it continues to grow as a social networking site.  So, if this is so widely used and easily navigated, why are we not taking advantage of this in our classrooms?

Just as we build off of what students already know in math, we should be using resources in the classroom that students are already familiar with.  Jeffrey Young states in his article More on Academic Twittering: Breaking Down the Classroom Walls, we must "extend the walls of the classroom, make education relevant to all aspects of students lives rather than just what they do four-five hours a day we need to think of ways to extend the ways we form and foster learning communities".  In that way, Twitter can be used in various ways in the classroom:

1. An interactive way to build prior knowledge on a subject before learning/reading about it.  For example, the teacher could post the subject to be discussed (i.e. different types of communities) and students could respond with what they are familiar with (i.e. experiences in traveling between different communities).  Then, students could respond and expand on each others' posts.
2. An interactive reader response forum.  The following explanation was extracted from the article Can we use Twitter for educational activities, "students can use tweets to send out questions and observations to the group."
3. A public book sharing forum where students write a short summary of a book they recommend to friends.  This would assist students in summarizing only the main ideas of a story or novel.  Students could easily visit the site to determine what to read next.
4. A project management tool where students can tweet to delegate assignments and check in with each other. (Can we use Twitter for educational activities)
5. A resource for teachers to share best practices with other educators.
6. Find more uses of Twitter in the classroom: Can we use Twitter for educational activities.

Let's make students' learning experiences engaging and relevant to their lives, their needs and their knowledge!