Twitter in the Classroom: Engage Your Screenagers

Twitter in the Classroom: Engage Your Screenagers
in 140 Characters or Less
ISTE 2014

Twitter in the Classroom Poster – ISTE 2014 (Click to Enlarge)

New to Twitter? Start here:

How to Use Twitter – A great guide for the absolute beginner.
Howcast: How to use Twitter (video) – A screencast of all the basics to get started on Twitter.
Twitter 101 : Getting Started with Twitter – Tips for getting more out of Twitter.
Twitter for Teachers – A concise guide for teachers getting started on Twitter.

How Are Educators Using Twitter in the Classroom?

CNN Report on how one San Francisco teacher uses Twitter in his classroom.

George Mayo
George Mayo teaches at Silver Springs International Middle School in Maryland. His students used Twitter to write a collaborative story with students in six different countries.

Enrique Legaspi
Enrique Legaspi teaches at Hollenbeck Middle School in East L.A. The video that accompanies this article explains Mr. Legaspi’s “Aha moment.” He explains how using Twitter has increased class participation, especially for his shy students.

Jordan Shapiro
Jordan Shapiro is a professor at Temple University. Rather than fight against students using their phones in class, he encourages them to tweet during class and has created hashtags for his classes. This article pushed me to try a semester-long Twitter assignment with my own students.

Principal Steve Williams teaches us “to meet the students where they are already excited to be.”

Classroom Strategies

50 Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom – Samantha Miller gives 50 very concise suggestions for using Twitter in the classroom.
25 Ways To Use Twitter In The Classroom, By Degree Of Difficulty – Edudemic
22 Ways to Use Twitter with Bloom’s Taxonomy – Strategies from TeachByte

Twenty Five Interesting Ways To Use Twitter in the Classroom from Michael Sauers

Examples Cited in my ISTE Poster Session

English
#1book140 – a virtual book club hosted by The Atlantic.

Math
TweetStats – Examine tweet timelines, reply statistics, tweets per month, and tweets per hour for any username.

Science
#SciStuChat – a monthly Twitter chat between scientists and students.

Social Studies
@RealTimeWWII – Live tweets from the 2nd World War, as it happens on this date & time in 1942, & for 4 years to come.

General Resources

Pollowers – Poll your followers with a tweet and they can respond through Twitter
Poll Everywhere – Students can respond to live polls using Twitter.
Polldaddy – Post quizzes and collect results via Twitter.
TweetChat – Great for creating backchannels.
TweetDeck – Customize your Twitter experience.
Hootsuite – Social Media Dashboard
Storify – Create a story by hashtag.

Professional Development

How to Use Twitter to Grow Your PLN – A concise guide from Edutopia on building a PLN on Twitter
Why (And How) Teachers Are Using Twitter – Edudemic A simple overview of using Twitter for professional Development
Twitter Exec Reports that Educators Dominate the Twitter-sphere – EdSurge

#Edu Hashtags

Hashtag	Subject	Day	Time (EST)
#artsed	Arts in Education	Thursday	7:30-8:30 PM
#edchat	Education (General)	Tuesday	12-1 PM, 7-8 PM
#edmusic	Music Education	Tuesday	7-8 PM
#edtechchat	Educational Technology	Monday	8-9 PM
#elemchat	Elementary Education	Saturday	6-7 PM
#engchat	English Teachers	Monday	7-8 PM
#mathchat	Math Teachers	Monday, Thursday	3:30-5:00 PM
#mschat	Middle School	Thursday	8-9 PM
#pechat	Physical Education	Monday	7-8 PM
#scichat	Science Teachers	Tuesday	7-8 PM
#sschat	Social Studies Teachers	Monday	7-8 PM
#specialedchat	Special Education	Wednesday	4-5 PM

TeachThought’s Complete Guide To Twitter Hashtags For Education
EdTech Magaznine’s Printable List of the Best Education Hashtags
Cybraryman’s Extensive List of Education Hashtags

#TwitterChats

The Power of Twitter Chats

An informative video featuring expert teachers
explaining how they use and benefit from hashtag chats.

View more chats on the Official Weekly Twitter Chat List

#Twitterati

Global Learning Twitterati – Education Week
10 Ed-Tech Voices to Follow on Twitter – EdTech Magazine
Top 5 ed-tech Twitter accounts we follow – eSchool News
Top 20 #ISTE2014 Influencers to Follow on Twitter – Gaggle

Still not convinced that it’s time to embrace Twitter
rather than ban it?

Once blocked, Twitter and other social media become classroom tools – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Allaying Our Parents’ Fear– The School Superintendents Association. A superintendent’s advice on helping parents disarm their fears of students using social media for school-related purposes.
They Loved Your G.P.A. Then They Saw Your Tweets – NewYork Times. A good case for teaching responsible social media use rather than banning it from the classroom.
10 Reasons to Ban Pens and Pencils in the Class – A strong argument through parody.
My View: Don’t ban social media from schools –Steve Nicholls, media strategist and author of Social Media in Business