How
to monitor what students tweet about their assignments? How to follow each
student’s thoughts and progresses, with thousands of tweets continually coming
in?
Those
questions are haunting me all these days since I was introduced the educational
purpose of using Twitter. Fortunately, when I read Teach with Twitter? Read This! by Michelle Pacansky-Brock, I found
the trick lies in using the hashtag, which is the easies and the least
cumbersome way to track your students’ new tweets. Once the students are asked
to add hashtag on related topic, the Twitter will automatically archive their interactions
and engagements with their teachers.
Before studying 35 Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom, I never think
about useful ways to incorporate Twitter in classroom in that communications in
classroom are through face-to-face interaction rather than through machines
without actually talking to each other. However, it indeed casts some lights to
my future teaching insights. Firstly, Twitter provides a platform for me to enhance
learning outsides the classroom. Like what is proposed in the article, students
could follow experts and thus communicate with them, which enabling the students
to absorb practical and most current knowledge in related fields. In addition,
they could share what they have gathered through those inspiring
communications
to their classmates and/or followers. Secondly, it is a rather good tool to
monitor students’ learning process. One advantage of using microblogging rather
than normal blog is that microblogging appears less formal and more prompt. If
the students find it is lengthy and tiresome to format blogs, they would love
to tweet. As for teachers, they could get instant feedback of what they require
students to do and what their problems and difficulties. Thus teachers could provide
immediate suggestions to clear any possible obstacles for students.
