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3 scenarios for using Twitter with your students

Posted By Doug Belshaw On 27th September 2007 @ 16:06 In ICT in Education | Comments Disabled

WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at [1] dougbelshaw.com... [2] ICT in Education

Although I said in [3] this post that I was going to start using [4] Twitter with my Year 10 (now Year 11) students, I never actually got round to doing it. Now that they’re finishing off their last taught module before their final piece of coursework, I’m thinking about revision.

I remember ten years ago when I was doing the same course - with limited Internet access and no [5] Wikipedia, granted - being stuck with fairly simple questions during revision and having nowhere to quickly turn. Yes, I could have gone downstairs and dusted off the huge atlases and maps to find out, but this would take a long time. By the time I’d clarified a simple point, the kitchen (and more importantly, the fridge) was beckoning. You know how it is for teenagers… ;)

[6] Fridge

Or, if that doesn’t strike a chord, how about this: I (and I expect you) know of very few teenagers who don’t have a mobile phone. Sometimes other people are using the family computer. And if they’re not, can take time to turn on, login to email, send the email, etc. Then you have to wait by the computer for a reply (if it’s urgent). Using a mobile phone is a much better way of doing things as you can be working wherever you want whilst you wait for that update.

Which brings me to [4] Twitter. You can get SMS notifications of when your ‘friends’ update their Twitter accounts. You can also send messages to Twitter directly via SMS. In both cases, the mobile phone number is not shown. This makes it ideal in an educational environment where teachers want to make themselves available, but not give out their contact details!

Here’s how it works:

Twitter with students - scenario 1

Students will first of all need to set up an account and choose to follow the Twitter username of their teacher. The teacher can then follow them in return if it is to be used solely for educational purposes.

By putting d username and then inputting the (max. 140-character) message, the details will only be sent to the intended recipient instead of being sent so that everyone can see via the public timeline. Depending on the notifications the recipient has set up (instant messaging, online, SMS, email) they will be alerted that they have a new message. They can then respond to this in a similar fashion. The best way to learn things like this is through practice - try setting up your own account and sending a message beginning d mrbelshaw (i.e. to me!)

There’s more on getting things set up on the Twitter website [8] here.

The problem with Scenario 1 is that it depends on a teacher being ‘on-call’ virtually 24-7. Whilst we’re all committed professionals, there’s a limit to how far you want your students to intrude into your private life. You can turn off mobile phone updates by sending an SMS to Twitter saying OFF. You can then turn them back on again by sending a message saying ON.

A better solution is to encourage students to become their own learning network - similar to the connectivism theory espoused by [9] George Siemens. Here’s how it works:

Twitter with students - scenario 2

Unlike a direct message which can only be seen by the recipient, placing @username directs the ‘tweet’ (Twitter update) at the intended recipient whilst allowing everyone to also see it. This facilitates virtual ‘classroom discussion’. Anytime someone responds to you using the @ symbol, it is logged in the ‘replies’ section of your personal Twitter page. Have a look at mine for example: [10] http://twitter.com/mrbelshaw

Twitter - replies

Having a network of learners is all well-and-good, but there’s no real reason to limit to those who participate in lessons your physical classroom. As with the personal learning network (PLN) facilitated by [4] Twitter in the edublogosphere (usually through the [12] TwitterFox plugin for [13] Firefox), students can also ask questions of those they only know online. This is how such a scenario would work:

Twitter with students - scenario 3

The great thing with this model is that, as with the edublogosphere PLN, there are times when some are teaching, some are at home, and some are just waking up. Thus, there’s always something going on! If there was a similarly worldwide student PLN then common targets and projects could be worked upon. At any given time, some students worldwide would be at school, some at home, some asleep and some just waking up. Together with individual blogs, Google Apps for Education and collaborative wikis, the sky is the limit!

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Comments Disabled To "3 scenarios for using Twitter with your students"

#1 Comment By David Noble On 27th September 2007 @ 16:48

Great post, Doug

#2 Comment By Nick Dennis On 27th September 2007 @ 19:08

Cheers for this Doug, I’ll let Iain know! :)

#3 Pingback By L2eL - Learning to e-Learn » Using Twitter with students On 28th September 2007 @ 18:29

[…] a great entry on Doug Belshaw’s blog on using Twitter with students.  I’d mentioned using this with Studywiz and the RSS Reader in […]

#4 Comment By Andy Mee On 30th September 2007 @ 22:34

Are there cost implications for the students? How much would it cost a student on a pay-as-you-go service to send messages to Twitter and receive messages from Twitter? I’m guessing it would be regarded as an international number and somewhere in the region of 20p per message. Is this a significant barrier?

Have you any thoughts on Jaiku? Similar to Twitter but with additional functionality.

#5 Comment By Doug Belshaw On 1st October 2007 @ 07:16

Hi Andy,

There’s a UK number too so it would be a standard text message. Many of the students I would use this with, like me, have contracts with unlimited (or very many) free text messages included per month. :)

Yes I’ve seen [39] Jaiku, and [40] Pownce. I haven’t played around too much with the former, but don’t like the latter too much…

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URLs in this post:
[1] dougbelshaw.com: http://www.dougbelshaw.com
[2] Image: http://teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk/index.php/category/ict-in-education/
[3] this post: http://teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk/index.php/2007/02/15/using-twitter-with-your-stu
dents/
[4] Twitter: http://www.twitter.com
[5] Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org
[6] Image: http://flickr.com/photos/moritz-joesch/128933356/
[7] Twitter: http://www.twitter.com
[8] here: http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=76
[9] George Siemens: http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/
[10] http://twitter.com/mrbelshaw: http://www.twitter.com/mrbelshaw
[11] Twitter: http://www.twitter.com
[12] TwitterFox: http://www.naan.net/trac/wiki/TwitterFox
[13] Firefox: http://www.getfirefox.com
[14] List of Twitter commands: http://twitter.com/help/lingo
[15] Twitter knowledge base (FAQ): http://help.twitter.com/index.php
[16] Twitter lexicon: http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=76
[17] Twitter Tweets for Higher Education: http://web20teach.blogspot.com/2007/08/twitter-tweets-for-higher-education.html
[18] Twitter: an evaluation: http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1145.php
[19] The Asymptotic Twitter Curve: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/12/httpwww37signal.ht
ml
[20] The Edublogosphere is being criticized for twittering: http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2007/07/edublogosphere-is-being-criticized-fo
r.html
[21] Twitter Me This: Brainstorming Potential Educational Uses For Twitter: http://eduspaces.net/csessums/weblog/179742.html
[22] Twitter as a model of learning: http://bashinged.wordpress.com/2007/09/16/twitter-as-a-model-of-learning/
[23] Twitter: Ephemeral Learning Tool: http://adifference.blogspot.com/2007/07/twitter-ephemeral-learning-tool.html
[24] Twitter in the Classroom?: http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2007/07/03/twitter-in-the-classroom
[25] Twitter ‘cheat sheet’: http://trainque.com/blog/2007/03/15/twitter-cell-phone-cheat-sheets/
[26] Twitter fan wiki: http://twitter.pbwiki.com/
[27] TwitterGram: http://www.twittergram.com/
[28] ?: http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/popularity-contest
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[39] Jaiku: http://www.jaiku.com
[40] Pownce: http://www.pownce.com

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