The National Education Association gave some examples how Twitter is being integrated into the classroom. Some teachers use it to review lessons and remind students what is going to be covered in class that day or the next. In the article, Christopher Bergeron states: "Twitter is like the ticker at the bottom of CNN -- only a ticker populated with information about those people or things you care about, want to learn from, or want to know about.”
Amanda Wynter writes about one English class utilization of Twitter in her article
Bringing Twitter to the Classroom. Twitter provided the classroom with the social and communicative platform that the previous curriculum failed to foster. Once the students were familiar with the "dos and don'ts" of Twitter, they were multiple times a day, even after school has ended. This provided a sense of an ongoing conversation about one theme in a book or a current event. The students seemed to be reading more closely and the shy kid in class was being retweeted and favorited by teachers from around the world.
So Teachers, please look past all of the selfies, memes and the other nonsense and see the potential of using social media in the classroom. It makes learning more fun, interesting, and caters to many 21st Century skills the students may need for their future career endeavors.
I think Wynter makes and excellent point that students have to be taught the "do's and don'ts" of Twitter before we can integrate it into our classrooms. Sometimes I think we forget that when we choose to add a tool to our classroom, we have to teach Digital Citizenship for that tool as well.
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