Twitter

I recently read Clive Thompson review on How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense in the Wired Magazine. It was interesting to read how Thompson describes the negative reputation that Twitter has obtained by non-users or infrequent users. Personally during my first viewing of Twitter it seemed like a memory of my first experiences with IM. When I was trying to read the transcripts of other Twitter’s I couldn’t understand what they were talking about. Thompson writes how “It's practically collectivist — you're creating a shared understanding larger than yourself” which is created through multiple conversations less than 140 characters in a message.

Twitter can be used in the classroom to promote conversations in various specific content curriculums. Opening the communication doors for students to write new understandings, questions, inquiries, and findings would ideal on Twitter. Providing a safe and welcoming environment for students, teachers, parents, and experts to send messages that are clear and precise to the followers would be an excellent teaching tool. This could also serve as a formative assessment for educators to assess student’s strengths and areas of development.

Another implication for Twitter is developing collaborative projects. In an Education Week’s article Educators Test the Limits of Twitter Microblogging Tool, George Mayo developed an ongoing development of a book for his 8th grade class. I feel this would be an excellent implication for Twitter. Using Twitter as a resource for students to jointly write a story or document would promote collaboration and teamwork. In the article Mayo’s students had students from all over the world writing the story, even China! This is defiantly an implication for Twitter that I will try with my class!

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2008/06/24/01twitter_web.h02.html
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-07/st_thompson