Twitteriffic!

Twitter makes networking with other professionals or your students very easy. In generating my Twitter lists, I was looking for active tweeters who had similar interests. I searched the keywords that I was most interested in for my research- “anatomy and physiology”, “authentic assessment”, “e-portfolios”, “web 2.0”, and “assessment”. When I found people who looked interesting to me, I looked at their home pages to see how many followers they had, how often they tweeted, if they were tweeting about anything I wanted to read, and if they responded to other tweets. I used their lists of followers and people they were following to search contacts as well. I also looked at the lists from our school and our district’s technology directors.

There were two individuals in particular whose interests were most similar to mine, as they both taught Anatomy and were interested in technological tools. These were @daveandcori and @chrisludwig. Several others tweeted frequent useful links to technology integration. These were @rmbyrne, @krains, @allinlearning, @JudyArtz and @web20classroom. One artist, @HumanAnatomyArt, tweeted links to her blog and new works of anatomical art, showing a creative use of anatomy in a non-health related field. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, @HHMINEWS, offers updates and information to educators in the field of medical research.

Please feel free to view/use my Twitter list at https://twitter.com/#!/melisuesoxrox/lists to create contacts of your own and to learn more about this blog’s topic areas. I hope that you will find some valuable resources!

After generating a Twitter list to gain contacts and resources for this blog, I was disappointed to see how few Anatomy and Physiology links there were to actual teachers and professors of the subject. The vast majority of tweets on the subject were from complaining students. I was disheartened while sifting through all of the tweets from students who were bored, confused, or overwhelmed by their Anatomy and Physiology classes, but these are all great reasons for creating a network of professionals to improve our levels of student engagement, understanding, and communication.

Twitter may be used in the classroom in a much more constructive manner by students than registering their opinions of the class while the teacher is lecturing. It fosters a quick interaction where many students can simultaneously participate in discussions through a Tweetdeck (grid of tweets) that can be displayed on a screen in the front of the room. It allows students to respond freely without falling fear to shyness. It makes them synthesize their information to a few most important words. This is a good alternative to using clickers for a review or formative assessment activity, as it offers the freedom to use open responses rather than being limited to a single letter response.

With the generation of Twitter lists, students could continue any discussions outside of the class, as the teacher will have linked them together and the students could subscribe to the list for their class. Outside of class, the teacher can still monitor or participate in the discussion. The students can contact one another if they have questions or thoughts about homework and the teacher may also be able to respond.

Using Twitter is much more feasible in a high school or college classroom where many students have their own smartphones or laptops. This way, the number of school computers needed would be less and students might be put in small groups or pairs based on the availability of these technologies. Some schools may block Twitter in the school, but many are allowing it, as they see its merits and use it as a quick and easy way to communicate to teachers, students, and parents.

Twitter is also useful for teachers to remind their students of homework assignments or help students with homework assignments. If students are having difficulty with a topic, the teacher may tweet links to sites that may be of help to them. The dependent factor here is that students have access to a device that goes online.

For more ideas on how to use Twitter in the classroom, try some I have bookmarked at http://www.delicious.com/stacks/view/QFWJYu

If you have any great stories or suggestions of how to use Twitter in the classroom or great links to share, I’d love to hear them!