Twitter Thoughts By Lisa Cacc.

I came to this year's Summer Institute not clearly understanding the purpose of Twitter. I still have some questions, but have also found a few purposes. So what exactly is Twitter? It is a free social networking service that allows you to communicate with groups of people that you choose to follow. The catch is that you can only use up to 140 characters per "tweet" or message. This is just like a cell phone text message, which is where the limited character typing came from. From the research done over the week, I did find a couple of ways teachers are using Twitter in their classrooms. I should note that each case was done at a college level.
1) The Professor required students to use Twitter to retrieve assignments, and take attendance.
2) Another Professor set up new hashtags every week for her students to follow. After students posted comments the professor would project the comments on the board to generate classroom discussions.

I still question, and am pondering, at what age would classroom twittering be appropriate? Since I work at a K - 8 school, I am not completely sure that twittering would be beneficial here. Research claims that it increases classroom participation, but each student obviously needs a computer or cell phone with internet access. Maybe it is better technology for use in High School and College.

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