I found this article very interesting. I've noticed that a lot more high school students are using Twitter these days and they prefer it over Facebook. My friend's sister was saying to me, "Facebook is for old people, Twitter is what it's all about." Little does she know Twitter has been out for a while :)
This article discusses how to implement the usage of twitter into the classroom. It's great way for posting reminders and quick updates and a good platform for students to ask questions and track hashtags. When I was in high school, my teacher did a similar project to #3 on this list: Personifying Characters on Twitter. We were learning about the Holocaust and we were each assigned a role and Twitter was meant to be our diary entries as us writing in that time period. It really helped to get into the mindset of the topic.
I really like the idea of using Twitter to become different characters like your teacher used. I don't necessarily think Twitter is needed in the classroom, but if used effectively it could be beneficial to students. One plus side is that most students already have access to Twitter and likely have accounts, but a drawback is that students probably wouldn't want to post about school work on their personal accounts. I think teachers need to look past just using an app or a certain technology for it's "cool factor" and try to find one that makes the most sense for what they want to achieve. Very interesting article and nice post!
ReplyDelete