Twitter in the Classroom

Eyebrows are raised when I mention using Twitter in the classroom. "You, Cedric!? Twitter??" - "What a waste of time!" - "Don't your students have better to do?"

Of course I am very well aware that social networking tools can be overused and abused. However I have come to accept that they are not going away and that our students will be using them. So our role is to teach them how to use these tools in the best way possible.

At the beginning of the year (week 2 or 3) I request my students to sign up for a Twitter account. Then I ask them to become each other's followers. This way some kind of French or Latin network is established. The important thing comes next. I require them then to sign up for at least three Google News Alerts that relates to our class. For example in my Latin class they could to sign up for "latin language" or "Cicero" or "Roman archaeology" or "Roman gladiator". Then Google will notify my students about any news story related to the key words they have entered. I ask them to sift through the articles that are coming their way and then if they have found something that they find worth sharing, I tell them to tweet (or is it "twitter") about it.

I believe that the use of Twitter in this fashion extends the classroom beyond the 55 minutes we have together on a daily basis. They can participate in the class without being physically together. And it also allow students that are on the more timid side to participate in a way that may be more confortable for them.