The Edtech challenge this week is to develop a lesson plan which incorporates Twitter into the classroom. While I am not sure that Twitter can be used as a primary tool in planning an educational activity, I will suggest four micro-usages (micro-blogging pun absolutely intended) of Twitter in a classroom setting.
1. As a bulletin board. Teachers can set up a Twitter account for a class through which they can tweet information about assignments, updates about projects, links to relevant information, or personal messages from the teacher to their class. This is similar to posting on a class website, but has the advantage of being sent immediately to students’ mobile devices. An example of this can be found at http://educationtechnology-theoryandpractice.blogspot.com/2011/05/twitter-in-classroom-part-1.html
2. To create a learning network for students beyond the classroom with the students in the class. Similar to what was suggested above in updating projects, should a student update their own work on a blog or presentation, they can tweet the link to other students who would quickly be aware that updates were available and could follow the link to critique the work.
3. To create a learning network for students beyond the classroom with people who are not in the class. By using hash tags we could in theory develop a network of students across schools learning similar materials that could use Twitter to share and critique work as described above.
4. Backchanneling. There has to be a better way to do this than using Twitter, but allowing students to comment on a lecture via Twitter could make a lecture more interactive making students more involved in the learning and giving the instructor real time feedback on what the students understand and are thinking.
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