To Tweet or Not to Tweet...Is that the question?

image: ncvs.blogspot.com

In the next couple weeks we'll be looking at social networking. I'm going to give you a few resources here so that you can come to class armed with some background knowledge. Basically, Twitter is a social networking tool...people that are connected together via a network. Twitter is also considered a "microblogging" tool. Although it doesn't have a traditional blog format, it can accomplish some of the same things...yet on a smaller..."micro" scale. Twitter only allows a person to use 140 characters per post...called a "tweet."


Read through this post from Jeff Utecht on how his use of Twitter as a teacher created some great communication opportunities for a class of 5th graders. 

Read this blog post by Lisa Nielsen on the Tech and Learning website about  different ways Twitter is being used in education. Here is a link to another of her posts about how tweets can be integrated into a class newspaper display using site called paper.li. It's a  pretty neat application that integrates with Twitter that could be used a variety of ways in a classroom.

Scan through this pretty good no nonsense list  with using twitter...practical advice, do's and don'ts, and an interesting list of things people say about the use of twitter.


Respond to :
What are your thoughts about Twitter? 
Do you have a new or different understanding or perspective about how teachers are using it? 
Is Twitter something you would like to investigate further or try out?
How do you see Twitter being used in a Personal Learning Network?

If you are especially interested in learning more about Twitter, here are a few good resources. 

If you want to see some other ideas you can page through 35 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom. (notice the Creative Commons licensing) Tom Barrett from the UK has put together a google doc presentation (if you click the link and open it, it will then be saved in your Google Docs) which compiles a myriad of ways Twitter is being used by educators all over the world. You can click the page for it to advance to the next slide...or there are navigational arrows in the bottom left corner of the page.

Here is a very good  Twitter tutorial video that shows you how to use many of the features of Twitter. The tutorial is divided into 2-3 minute clips each so you can use the table of contents at the left and click on the feature you want to learn about.