I May Have Found the Solution

It's been awhile since I've posted, but I'm back! A couple posts back I mentioned that I thought Twitter could be useful in the classroom, but being able to follow friends could (ok definitely would) be a distraction for a lot of students. Well, I have found the solution...Edmodo! A few weeks ago in one of my classes, my professor had us use this site and it's great. To me it is a combination of Facebook and Twitter, but without all the distractions because it is made just for teachers and students. This seemed to work great in my college course. The teacher posted a question, set a timer, and we all had 2 minutes to respond to the question. Because he had this projected up front, we could all see everyone's responses and it was a great discussion starter. I think that this site would be great in high school, and even middle school, because kids don't always like to raise their hand in class. This way, the teacher can get immediate feedback about where their students are at with the lesson, and every students can "vocalize" what their thoughts on the question are...it's a win-win situation!

(Picture used with permission by iClipart.com)

My Thoughts on Twitter in the Classroom...

Hey everybody! Today I'm going to talk about using Twitter in the classroom. I personally LOVE Twitter, but not everyone is familiar with this new phenomenon. In my Educational Technology and Design class we were introduced to a video that was posted by a teacher who uses Twitter in his AP Biology class. If you're not familiar with Twitter, you can find many videos (like the one posted below) that give you an overview of how it works and what you can do with it. Anyway, this video that we watched got me thinking about how Twitter could actually be very useful in high school classrooms. I personally have a Twitter account and check it all the time, but even if I didn't go on it a lot, I could have Twitter text me when there's a new tweet from a specific person or even everyone I follow. This being said, I think that high school students could really benefit from this. Have you ever seen a high school kid without their phone glued to their side? Me neither. By having the students follow the class (or teacher) on Twitter, they would be given instant updates about assignments, test reminders, study sessions, or whatever! I think this could be a really effective way for teachers to communicate with students, especially those who don't always write their assignments down and then "forget" what they were supposed to do for the next class. I sure wish some of my teachers had done this while I was in high school, I definitely would have utilized it because I don't always remember to check my email, but I always read new text messages!

YouTube Video: Twitter in Plain English