Twitter - #Education

At first glance, Twitter may not be thought of as a useful classroom tool because it is perceived as a way to keep up with your friends, and after all, how much information can be disseminated in 140 characters or less?  However, some believe that it is a valuable way to create a new personal learning community that involves a new way to gather information and resources and connect with other people in your pursuit of learning.  Here is one example of success using Twitter in the classroom:

One example of success using Twitter in the classroom

Education is slow to integrate anything!  Thus, I did a little bit of research to see how Twitter can be easily used in the classroom so you can get a head start on how to make it work in your classroom.

• Tom Barret and other teacher collaborators have created a Google Doc to share ideas on how to use Twitter in the classroom. 
•  Here are a few more ideas thanks to Samantha Miller of teachhub.com

There are a few challenges regarding Twitter in the classroom, however.  First, many school districts block social networking sites such as this so that students cannot access them on school computers.  Second, students may have different social norms for using social networking depending on the context.  For instance, students may be more inclined to misbehave online than in the real world, because they believe there are no real consequences for online behavior.  Third, the vast amount of information attainable on Twitter may not always be factually correct because it is free for anyone to post anything.  This is an important idea for students to understand so they can learn to decipher information they need from information that could mislead them.