Twitter in the Classroom

It took me a little while to find an article about Twitter's effect on education that I really enjoyed. The article I chose was a New York Times article about Twitter's use in classrooms, particularly high school, but the article says that Twitter could be useful starting in elementary school through university.

Take a look at Trip Gabriel's Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using Social Media.

Perhaps Gabriel is making a good point that telling students to put their phones away and not use their laptops is futile. People of all ages today are texting and tweeting and posting even when they're in a room full of their closest friends. So asking a student to stop may be counterproductive. Embracing this technology and putting it to use in the classroom, Gabriel argues, is helping students open up to class discussions and ask questions they might not feel comfortable voicing aloud.

My one concern as I read about Tweeting during class was: how can you be sure that people are staying on task and not doing other things as well?

It turns out that Gabriel also had this thought. He explains that Tweeting in class is only successful if teachers check the conversation after class to catch for non-class-related Tweets. Although, I would still argue that if students are tweeting on their phones, what's to stop them from texting their friends at the same time? Teachers would have no way to moderate those conversations.

Students from an English high school class who tweet for and during class were interviewed for the article. They all agreed that Tweeting allows quiet students to get involved in the discussion and interests the students enough that they are more willing to ask questions and contribute to the conversation. 

Although embracing technology is a necessity these days, I'd still argue that we should tread carefully. Not every classroom will benefit from Tweeter as a way to generate conversation. For instance, our LBST courses of 110 students may overwhelm the professor and each other with questions and comments. Not to mention it would be more difficult to catch the inappropriate comments.

On the other hand, we all experienced a successful usage of Twitter in our History in the Digital Age class when Jennifer couldn't come in, but could contribute ideas and thoughts via Twitter. So perhaps with smaller classes, Twitter can become an excellent tool for teachers and professors.

To those of you who want to become a teacher or professor, would you use Twitter as a discussion tool in your classrooms? Why or why not?