Students don't always know when I have posted grades or updated assignment web pages, and they don't always read the email announcements I send out about those events. Twitter, if they looked at it, would seem to be a good way to announce the announcements. Syndication of the course schedule is an alternative. Any experience out there?

I allow students to follow me on Twitter and regularly post links, events, and comments relevant to course material. However, I do not specifically use Twitter as a course tool. I might add that I do not "friend" students on Facebook, so Twitter is the only way they would find the links I post.

I use Twitter primarily to develop, maintain, and benefit from a network of others interested in the intersection of digital technologies and education around the world. Secondarily, it helps filter the web for me, to draw my attention to news, analysis, and commentary on my areas of interest via the network of like-minded scholars, journalists etc of which I am part. Communication with students is an added bonus, not the main attraction, and there I use it as much to stay in touch with recent alumni as with current students on campus and overseas.

I use Twitter as edwebb does. If I find links of interest to my courses, I add a hash tag and the course number (e.g. #TWIT101) to alert students who do follow me, or for alumni who have taken those courses. For some courses I also create class blogs; various Wordpress themes include a Twitter widget displaying recent tweets, so those students who don't use Twitter can follow the links there. Needless to say, I don't tweet anything from my Twitter account that I wouldn't share with students. Like Rossemmett, I don't "friend" students on Facebook until they've graduated. Since I don't have much time for Facebook, I have Twitter set up to post updates to Facebook. Alumni frequently comment on the interest and usefulness of links I've posted.

While I don't make Twitter use mandatory, I do discuss ways in which students might eventually find it useful in the real world, pointing them to articles such as Mashable's guide to Twitter for Journalists: http://mashable.com/2009/05/14/twitter-journalism/

Like many teacher-educators, I spend quite a bit of time looking for "instructional" applications of the use of technology but where there's some empirical evidence to support their use. Of course, with technologies like Facebook and Twitter, they're still pretty new, so there's not much to offer teachers except ideas like the student mobile reporter where teacher and student tweets reside on some common class blog site like mentioned in the examples above. There are a number of common examples of Twitter use where students can tweet with "experts in the field" like those in the international space station or a faculty member who's on sabbatical doing research related to classroom experiments. All of these have potential for being embedded in "authentic classroom" activity use and subsequently research studies. I think probably the most important thing is just getting started and sharing results with others like you're doing in this blog.

In other news, air has been declared good to breathe. As a trained instructional technology professional, I'm highly skeptical about Twitter. The fact is, appropriate uses of new technology are always challenging to faculty and -- more often than not -- technology is misused rather than properly used in the classroom.

In addition to posting to my personal Twitter feed using a designated hash tag for the course as others have noted, I also create a Twitter feed for the class that I use for posting specific class-related news, links, and resources for the students. In courses where I also blog, I syndicate blog news using TwitterFeed from my blog to Twitter. It's a great tool for promoting "presence" in the online learning environment.

I am so ready for post-Twitter! I am not tech-phobic or resistant to social media technology-- I just don't care for this one! There are better tools to accomplish what I need to do.

So 25 and younger aren't using Twitter, and faculty aren't using Twitter, then who is? I hardly use a phone anymore. Can we get rid of that platform too? It must be useless if that small sample doesn't find it valuable.

I tweet from my smartphone that is then forwarded to my FB. Many of my students and colleagues (I am a department head) follow these. I keep updated on my daughter's activities via tweets on my phone, as well as cnnbrk. I found out about Teddy's death and many other items first on my phone via tweets from CNN. That said, I have yet to use Twitter in teaching. I plan to do so in a lecture class, and have the page projected so as to report out small group discussion. Like clickers, tweeting is a good way to democratize participation, and encourage quieter students to pipe in rather than be forced to speak up. There is a history professor at UT Dallas who has done this most successfully in an undergraduate American history course...I don't have the URL for her class, but I am sure it would pop up on Google.

I completely disagree with this finding and it's implications. I know many students and staff who use Twitter for educational purposes (research, encouraging complete participation in classes, professional networking, etc.); communication with students outside the classroom to continue the learning process; as well as social networking. The sentiment that mentioned Twitter as "...another Web 2.0 technology that people are adopting simply because of its buzz factor and not a true ability to support teaching and learning" clearly has not given Twitter a chance.

I'm curious, if we were to poll 1,900+ college students and ask them if "lecturing" was an effective "teaching and learning" tool, what type of feedback would we get?

I suspect there will be a surge in Twitter's use over the upcoming academic year and hope that professionals from both Student and Acadmic Affairs will begin to realize its value in building a community of learners online.

For the fall semester I will be including Twitter as part of my class requirement. Students will research a Wellness topic, create a fact sheet and tweet interesting facts they have learned from their research. They will share their tweets with their classmates in 2-minute Twitter briefs as well. I am hoping that students will learn how to convey credible health information over the Net in a concise format and learn how exciting it is to share what they have learned.

http://twitter.com/Pch201wellness

What edwebb said, and we use Twitter to announce openings at our writing center and its satelitte locations. Lots of positive response and followers. I don't get why there's so much noise about Twitter in the classroom. Simply use the tools that suit your needs and goals.

I am not sold on the hype of twitter because 140 characters is not enough to keep my interest in terms of reading news, however I do find it useful to get around the clunky interface of Blackboard 7.3. I like that I can embed javascript in most blackboard areas. I especially use it to post my tweets to my Blackboard announcements page. Now I dont have to logon to Blackboard to post announcements or share articles, news and videos from other web sources. I just tweet it and it gets posted on Blackboard. Here is the code. Just create a Blackboard announcement, give it a title, click on the html code button (looks like ) and paste this in to the text box. Change the places I have indicated with your twitter username and hit submit.


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Hope this helps!

Adding javascript applet to blackboard announcements page makes it easy to update and share news, documents and videos with students without having to logon to blackboard each time. Just create an announcement on Blackboard, give it a title, click on the html code button (looks like ) and paste this code. Replace YOURUSERNAME with your twitter username and hit submit. Hope this is useful!




Twitter Updates

follow me on Twitter

Adding javascript applet to blackboard announcements page makes it easy to update and share news, documents and videos with students without having to logon to blackboard each time. Just create an announcement on Blackboard, give it a title, click on the html code button (looks like ) and paste this code. Replace YOURUSERNAME with your twitter username and hit submit. Hope this is useful!




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Hey my last post actually posted the java script!! here is the code (I hope)

Adding javascript applet to blackboard announcements page makes it easy to update and share news, documents and videos with students without having to logon to blackboard each time. Just create an announcement on Blackboard, give it a title, click on the html code button (looks like ) and paste this code. delete all the ~ from the beginning of the lines (the only way I could keep it from activating here) and replace YOURUSERNAME with your twitter username and hit submit. Hope this is useful!



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~Twitter Updates
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~follow me on Twitter
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OK I give up. Tweet me if you want the code.

http://www.twitter.com/160childdev_ou


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I use Twitter and a variety of other social media tools for classroom engagement (flickr, youtube/vimeo, wikis, utterli, etc.) and have for several years with great success. While Twitter may not be the most effective tool in every situation I find those students who do use it find a lot of value in it. I documented one class's use of twitter here http://billhandy.com/2009/04/18/the-social-media-classroom.

Bottom line, Twitter is a valuable tool for the classroom provided your audience is comfortable using the tool and you are using it with a purpose (hit and miss never works). Also, keep in mind social media tools are for more than simply one way communication.

I would love to hear from other higher ed professors who are using social media in the classroom. You can find me on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/billhandy