B. C. Digital Literacy

Twitter in the Classroom

 

A classroom Twitter account can be used to connect asynchronously with classrooms all over the globe. It is easy to find classrooms to connect with, please add your own class to these lists.

Drew Frank's collection of classrooms who Tweet

A general Google Doc of classrooms who Tweet

A classroom Twitter account should be authored by the learners, but moderated by the teacher. Informed parent consent is required to use this tool in your classrooms.

Twitter can be used to model the behaviours of an experienced social media user when a teacher makes their thinking visible.

 

How to Begin: Start by sharing your process about how to decide which classroom accounts to follow. Discuss how some adults or experts may have a lot to contribute to our learning, but not everything that they post may be appropriate for an educational account’s feed. Look for active classroom accounts to follow. Sometimes you can also find ideal classroom accounts to follow by seeing what accounts your favourite classrooms follow.

Craft your first few tweets together. Ideally, project your Twitter account onto a large screen using a data projector so that all learners can see what you are doing. I usually draft the Tweet on the board with the students. Our first Tweet usually identifies a little information about who we are: age or grade, interests, and a welcoming phrase.

After you send out the first Tweet, see what the students may have noticed: the character limit, the ability to include images, any hashtag you may have (strategically) used. This is your opportunity to discuss etiquette. Students need to know that everything that goes out is immediately public, and should be considered permanent. Classroom Tweets add dimension to the class identity, and should represent the full class as equitably as possible. We discuss how Retweets and Favouriting can be used to interact with other people on Twitter. Look at how other classrooms are using hashtags, and show the students how the hashtags keep all of the conversations related to a particular topic grouped together. Hashtags can also be used to create or tap into a positive community of learning. Over time, encourage students to explore which hashtags could be used to accompany the Tweets that they send out. You may also wish to create or add to a hashtag that represents your class, school or district.

 

Analog Tweets: Cut up strips of paper with 140 boxes on them. (paper copy) Have your second Tweet written by a student or a small group of students. Have the students create a more detailed “welcome” Tweet or a question for their followers. After you collect these paper Tweets you can choose to either send them all out digitally, or vote on one or two that best represent the group of students you are working with. Keep blank copies of these analog Tweets available in an easily accessible place in your classroom so that students can craft Tweets whenever they like.

Possible classroom expectations: Students can create draft Tweets: both on paper or in the actual account, but no one presses Tweet without the teacher moderating or reading each Tweet before it goes live. Our class does not use names or share out identifiable images of students. Some classes do, but ensure that you have parental permission.

 

Next steps: Guide students into taking responsibility for the classroom Twitter account. Co-create a list of topics that should be shared throughout the day or week: upcoming events, the learning that is happening right now, the resources that students are using to learn with, guests in the class, field trip experiences, questions to experts, etc. Keep a list of active hashtags to prompt student thinking on particular topics.

 

Management: Open your classroom Twitter account on a shared classroom device or devices. If you only have access to a device that is shared with other classrooms, ensure that you logout of the Twitter account before the device leaves your supervision. Do not share the password to your classroom account with your students.

 

Additional Resources:

Cybraryman’s collection of all educational Twitter things. 

A way to have your students Tweet using Google Sheets by Alice Keeler.

Starting your own Classroom Twitter account.

60 Ways to use Twitter in the classroom.