Twitter Transforms Teaching

Twitter recently tornadoed internet social media platforms, rising to the top. Twitter's now tapped as a teaching and learning tool with opportunities to motivate students and advance achievement. In fact, some professors find...

Using Twitter makes learning more relevant to students David Parry, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, talks about using Twitter, a new messaging service, for his courses. Tweeting informs learning space development.

In fact a growing number of college professors are using Twitter as an extension of the classroom. For example, Mary Knudson of Johns Hopkins is sold on it. She thinks the limited number of characters helps writers remember to choose words carefully, cut clutter and realize how much can be said in a small space. Many instructors experiment in a variety of ways. Bringing sites like Twitter into an academic environment is a revolution in teaching style.

Tools to start using Twitter Check out Michael Hyatt's Beginner's Guide to Twitter.

Ways to use Twitter with your classes You'll learn much by watching this video with your students as you begin to launch Twitter as a new conversational tool. Check out these 25 interesting ways to use Twitter with your students for deeper probes and current information on topics you study.

Tactics to add value to what you say in few words Here are tips to make what you say, clear and meaningful to others.

Organize Twitter conversations, replies and messages so they are easily handled Sites where you can download TweetDeck or Seesmic, which are the most popular and work easily for you.

Enjoy a wide variety of backgrounds for a unique Twitter profile. Here are free Twitter backgrounds to download or customize or you and students can enjoy customizing from your art. How you can create custom Twitter backgrounds.

Ways to carry on conversations about specific topics by using Twitter Chat To engage students on a specific topic set up #hashtags and Twitter Chats so many ideas and possibilities come to the forefront. Here's a short post on using #teach-me for demand driven teaching.

Energize students to create videos about content topics Here are 5 ways to share videos on Twitter.

Follow authors of nonfiction books on Twitter 70+ nonfiction authors to consider following

Be a good listener on Twitter 13 ways to enhance your own listening skills

Raise funds when students want to fund a service project.

Ask 2-footed questions on Twitter 2-footed questions spring from teacher and student curiosity and probe deeply into interests as they connect to a variety of topics.

What do you want to accomplish? Define Twitter goals, a tip for successful use of Twitter.

The British government is recommending that students "leave school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication. They must gain 'fluency' in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spell checker alongside how to spell." Twitter's pushing new frontiers!

Ready to stretch and try Twitter to communicate and learn with your students?

Twitter as a Teaching and Learning Tool just one topic at: Aug 17 - 21st MITA Brain Institute here