Using Twitter to Enhance One's Teaching: MOD#6 P2
Before I even read the articles, I began to see the educational use of twitter as I explored it. I created a Twitter account years ago not long after it became extremely popular as I wanted to see what all of the hype was about. However, to my disappointment, there was nothing interesting about it. It was very similar to Facebook, if Facebook didn't have anything but its status bar. At the time, it just seemed like a platform on which to follow celebrities, which I had no interest in. I shortly deleted my account after just creating it and never went back onto the site until recently. I have to say that this is a much different Twitter now than the one I knew all those years ago. It has a new look, and for the purpose of teaching, it is just dripping with educational possibilities. The two articles that I read gave some specific examples about this topic.
The first article that I read was about a math teacher who set up an exclusive Twitter account just for her students. While she was at a baseball game, she came with the the idea of taking pictures of her surroundings that could be related to the mathematical concepts she was teaching in class. She tweeted those pictures with questions to her students. To her surprise, she received responses from her students within minutes of those posts with creative answers. I think that this could be a great I idea for any teacher. For me, I believe I would definitely do something like this in my language classes. After school, I could send pictures of vocabulary we just learned and ask students to tweet back a response using that vocabulary in a complete sentence. I could tweet a video that I find by chance that connects well with a recent lesson we just had. This doesn't even need to be something that we learned in class. I could have a "new-Korean-word-of-the-day" tweet and ask my students to retweet a sentence using that word. Tweets on Korean culture could also be a great way to supplement my students' learning. Teachers often come across useful resources later on that they could have used in a lesson or they have useful resources, but no time or no place to implement them. This method could be a great way to not only use those resources to supplement our students' education but to motivate our students as well.
The second article I read talked about 25 ways that teachers can use Twitter in their teaching. Some of the ideas matched with those mentioned in the first article such as creating a separate account for your students. The others we great ideas too. One clever idea that was listed was tweeting discussion questions or content review tweets during a snow-day. This is a sneaky way to make sure students are staying on top of their studies. They are not getting away that easily anymore.
Before I even read the articles, I began to see the educational use of twitter as I explored it. I created a Twitter account years ago not long after it became extremely popular as I wanted to see what all of the hype was about. However, to my disappointment, there was nothing interesting about it. It was very similar to Facebook, if Facebook didn't have anything but its status bar. At the time, it just seemed like a platform on which to follow celebrities, which I had no interest in. I shortly deleted my account after just creating it and never went back onto the site until recently. I have to say that this is a much different Twitter now than the one I knew all those years ago. It has a new look, and for the purpose of teaching, it is just dripping with educational possibilities. The two articles that I read gave some specific examples about this topic. The first article that I read was about a math teacher who set up an exclusive Twitter account just for her students. While she was at a baseball game, she came with the the idea of taking pictures of her surroundings that could be related to the mathematical concepts she was teaching in class. She tweeted those pictures with questions to her students. To her surprise, she received responses from her students within minutes of those posts with creative answers. I think that this could be a great I idea for any teacher. For me, I believe I would definitely do something like this in my language classes. After school, I could send pictures of vocabulary we just learned and ask students to tweet back a response using that vocabulary in a complete sentence. I could tweet a video that I find by chance that connects well with a recent lesson we just had. This doesn't even need to be something that we learned in class. I could have a "new-Korean-word-of-the-day" tweet and ask my students to retweet a sentence using that word. Tweets on Korean culture could also be a great way to supplement my students' learning. Teachers often come across useful resources later on that they could have used in a lesson or they have useful resources, but no time or no place to implement them. This method could be a great way to not only use those resources to supplement our students' education but to motivate our students as well. The second article I read talked about 25 ways that teachers can use Twitter in their teaching. Some of the ideas matched with those mentioned in the first article such as creating a separate account for your students. The others we great ideas too. One clever idea that was listed was tweeting discussion questions or content review tweets during a snow-day. This is a sneaky way to make sure students are staying on top of their studies. They are not getting away that easily anymore.
The article suggests that Twitter could be a good place for students to ask question about their homework. I believe this would be a good opportunity to have students helping other students. On top of this, tweeting could be a good way of reminding students about a task they need to do like studying for a test, or to tell them all something important that you forgot to mention in class. These are all ideas that I would take advantage of.
These ideas were all of how we, as teachers, can use Twitter with our students to enhance their learning, but it doesn't stop there. There are many ways in which we ourselves can use Twitter to enhance our learning as well. As teachers, we should be constantly staying on top of educational trends and our subject matter. Although not mentioned in this blog post, teachers have many opportunities for professional development through the use of Twitter so that we may continue learning as well.
REFERENCES:
November Learning. (2017). Twitter as a Powerful Educational Tool | Using Twitter Hashtags. [online] Available at: http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/teaching-and-learning-articles/how-twitter-can-be-used-as-a-powerful-educational-tool/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2017].
Dunn, J. (2014). 25 top ways teachers use Twitter in the classroom - Daily Genius. [online] Daily Genius. Available at: http://dailygenius.com/use-twitter-in-the-classroom/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2017].
REFERENCES:
November Learning. (2017). Twitter as a Powerful Educational Tool | Using Twitter Hashtags. [online] Available at: http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/teaching-and-learning-articles/how-twitter-can-be-used-as-a-powerful-educational-tool/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2017].
Dunn, J. (2014). 25 top ways teachers use Twitter in the classroom - Daily Genius. [online] Daily Genius. Available at: http://dailygenius.com/use-twitter-in-the-classroom/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2017].
I love it when we see how one teacher uses a tool and we are inspired to create a lesson of our own. That is why things like blogging and tweeting are so important because who knows, we could be the ones inspiring someone else!
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