60 esempi di utilizzo di Twitter in aula presentati in
questo articolo da università on-line. Sono davvero grandi idee per
utilizzare il potere di un social network come Twitter per un insegnamento originale e competente.
Comunicazione
- Twitter as a
bulletin board: Jim Newman at Northern Illinois University uses Twitter as a
bulletin board for his class, letting students know about last minute news
like canceled classes.
- Ambient
office hours:
With Twitter, Howard Rheingold at Berkeley uses Twitter for group contact,
which he calls “student-to-teacher-to-student ambient office hours.”
- Keep
students in the loop: Using hashtags on Twitter, students who were not able to make it
to class can follow along and stay on top of the conversation.
- Assignment
coordination:
Instead of emailing each other or waiting to meet in class, students can
collaborate on projects and keep track of changes by using a Twitter
hashtag.
- Silencing
blurters:
For students who have trouble with disruptive blurting, allow them to
instantly tweet their blurts silently instead of out loud.
- Student engagement in
large lectures: In large lecture classes where student participation can be
intimidating and logistically problematic, Twitter can make it easy for
students to engage and discuss during class time.
- Parent
communication: Parents can sign up to receive tweets from teachers, learning
about activities, tests, projects, and more.
- Instant
feedback:
Twitter makes it easy to get instant approval and disapproval of
discussions, issues, and more right in the classroom.
- Attendance
reminders:
For students who have trouble making it to class on time, send reminders
before school to get them in the door earlier.
- Digital
faculty lounge: At Kent State University, college of education teacher William
Kist uses Twitter as a “digital faculty lounge” for networking with other
professors.
- Stay on top
of the learning process: Ask students to tweet and reply about what they’re learning,
difficulties they’ve faced, tips, resources, and more as an online
logbook.
- Classroom
notepad:
Using a Twitter hashtag, it’s easy to organize inspiration, reading,
ideas, and more for the classroom to share.
- Completed assignments: Students can let teachers
know when they’ve finished their work by alerting them on Twitter.
- Teaching
bite-sized info: Share medical terminology, Shakespeare quotes, kindergarten
activities, and more on Twitter.
- Twitter pop
quiz: Send
out quick quizzes on Twitter, and have them count for bonus points in the
classroom.
Organizzazione
- Twitter recaps: At the end of the day,
teachers can summarize what has been learned in the classroom, encouraging
reflection and discussion between students.
- Classroom connections: Classrooms around the world
can collaborate using Twitter as a communication tool.
- Collating classroom views: Students can share their
opinions on issues or any open questions, and they can be organized using
Twitter.
- Corraling comments in class: Monica Rankin at the
University of Texas at Dallas uses weekly hashtags to organize comments,
questions and feedback that students have used in class, while also
projecting live tweets in class for discussion.
- Finding great resources: Teachers can ask for
recommended books, teaching tools, and ideas for lessons, crowdsourcing
resources for the classroom.
- Following historical figures: There are many Twitter
accounts set up that share the lives and personalities of historical
figures, and students can follow them for fun and learning.
- Building a brand: Long after school is over, a
personal brand will live on for students. Using Twitter in the classroom
to build a brand is a valuable exercise for students.
- Partner with local
organizations: Discuss cultural and educational events in the area on Twitter.
- Talk to career experts: High school students
exploring their career options can talk to professions in the paths
they’re considering on Twitter.
- Conversations are a public study tool: Long after the conversation
in class is over, students can look back on the lecture discussion to find
important points when it’s time to take exams or write essays.
- Source evaluation: Students can share resources
and discuss whether it’s a good or bad source of information, encouraging
comments.
- Foreign language news stream: Students in a foreign
language class can build their reading skills and stay on top of the news
with a foreign language news stream.
- Gather real-world data: The classroom can ask Twitter
for data from their network, like temperatures, opinions, locations, and
interesting facts.
- Following the government: Often, local and national
political figures have Twitter feeds, and students in the classroom can
track their progress.
- Ask for help or advice: Using Twitter, teachers can
find out if anyone has advice about teaching issues, like when
certificates expire or how to handle classroom management.
- Communicating with experts: Find authors, scientists, or
historians on Twitter and get connected; a great resource for the
classroom.
Abilità di scrittura
- Vocabulary building:
Students can tweet sentences using a particular word to build vocabulary
learning.
- Twitter can improve writing and
punctuation: As long as students are held
accountable for their grammar, using Twitter offers a great opportunity
for improving writing and punctuation.
- Daily word games: Ask
students to unscramble anagrams, contribute synonyms, or give vocabulary
definitions on Twitter.
- Grammar review:
Students can tweet past tense, run on sentences, compound sentences, and
more.
- An exercise in learning to be
concise: At the College of the Holy Cross, assistant
professor Daniel Klinghard uses Twitter to teach students to be concise,
summarizing major political texts without going over Twitter-imposed
character limits.
Strumenti per Insegnanti
- Inspirational quotes of the day: Allow students to become more
familiar with Twitter, and exercise reading and writing skills by having a
student post an inspirational quote tweet each day, preferably relating to
course content.
- Conversations can continue outside of
class:
When students participate in Twitter discussions in class, there’s a great
opportunity for conversations to continue to develop even after the lecture
is over.
- School trip tracking: Whether it’s a field trip or
a long journey, students can log and track their progress on a school trip
using Twitter.
- Bringing characters to life: At California State
University-San Marcos, students in a literature course use Twitter to
bring Twilight characters to life, choosing characters
from the series to personify on Twitter.
- Class newspaper: The entire class can come
together to create a newspaper, contributing to sections using hashtags.
- Conference following: Students can follow
professionals and industry conferences to see what’s going on in that
particular realm.
- Bonus assignments: Give students optional bonus
work to do at home, assigned via Twitter.
- Meme tracking: Students can study communication
and sociology through the tracking of ideas and ads that spread through
Twitter.
- Reading assignment summaries: Students can build
140-character summaries based on reading assignments, forcing a focus on
quality.
- Link sharing: With Twitter, students can
share websites with class, making relevant link finding and sharing a
classroom assignment.
- Trend mapping: Using Twittermap, students
can track what people are talking about where.
- Researching locations: The class can send out a
tweet, asking people to give them their location, and then research that
particular location.
- Twitter puzzles: Tweet a puzzle each week,
giving a prize to the first student who shares the correct answer.
- Language learning: Teachers can send foreign
language students tweets in a different language, and have students
continue the conversation in the same language.
- Twitter poetry: Create a collaborative poem
where each student contributes one line.
- Twitter book club: Within the classroom, willing
participants can engage in a Twitter book club for extra credit.
- Word tracking: Using Twitter, students can
track a word, staying on top of any posts that contain a particular word,
like a movie title or store name.
- A Twitter story: Students can take turns
tweeting stories together, using a hashtag to keep it all together as each
student takes a turn to tweet the next line.
- Sharing microreviews: Using Twitter, students can
write a short review of movies, books, and music that they’ve enjoyed (or
not).
- Twitter haiku: Using Twitter, students can
share short poems to express how they feel about a subject.
- Twitter art show: Students can curate their own
art shows, using Twitter to share what they think belongs in a particular
exhibit.
- Collaborative event watching: Students can “watch”
presidential debates, political speeches, and other important events
together outside of class time, and then continue the discussion back at
school.
- Current events: By Twitter stalking, students
can stay on top of current events through users, such as @BarackObama during the presidential
elections.
- Find foreign pen pals: Students can use Twitter to
communicate with students in a different country, learning about their
hobbies, home, school, and more.