Tweetin’ in the Classroom
At the annual convention of the International Listening Association, Chris Bond and I will be presenting a session titled “Twitter as a Tool to Transform Listening and Speaking within the Classroom and Conference Contexts.” Chris’ focus will be on conferences, and as I have used Twitter in my public relations (and first-year experience) classes for nearly two years, I will focus on the classroom.
Here’s a sneak peek at my presentation, where I share how using Twitter in the classroom can be both an advantage (w00t) and a disadvantage (meh). If technology is working as it should, I will create an audio recording of my part of our session on Friday morning and sync it to the Prezi below.
- To help students get started using Twitter, use an assignment like One of Week of Twitter.
- Create a Twitter list to make it easy for students to find each other on Twitter.
- Let students know your specific expectations about Twitter usage in classroom.
- Some professors allow (and even encourage) Twitter usage during all class sessions. Others limit it to specific days or times.
- Create several short Twitter breaks during class.
- Stop your lecture or discussion and ask students to synthesize and share what they have learned. Encourage them to respond to others in the class.
- Monitor what they’re tweeting about during class time (once class is over).
- Redirect them if they’re off topic too much or if it appears that Twitter is a distraction.
- Be considerate of those who do not have access to a cellphone or computer during class time.
- Encourage them to take 140-char notes, then tweet via a library computer after class.
- Always use a class hashtag (like #COMM4333) if you want to make it easy for the class to follow the discussion.
- Use WhatTheHashtag to create a transcript of tweets for your class.
- Encourage students to share links to info that’s relevant to the class, along with the class hashtag, during times between classes.
- Let pros in your field know when your class is, and ask them to contribute to the conversation by asking questions via Twitter during class time.
- Consider having students participate in a scheduled chat (like #prstudchat) rather than holding a formal class once or twice during the semester.
What additional tips would YOU recommend?
(PS — When I attended the National Communication Association convention last fall, there was a bit of a kerfuffle about Twitter usage during conference sessions.)
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