Microblogging: Twitter's Instant Engagement

I have used twitter for about a year. I started with twitter because my cousin, who is also one of my best friends, lives in Florida. She is hard to keep in touch with--we both have busy lives-- but she kept bothering me to sign up for twitter. At first, I thought it was pointless. "I'm eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich" or "Running late for class" were typical tweets. I did not really care for twitter. As more of my friends joined, I started to use it more after getting frequent emails about people mentioning me (@missharc). Now, turning my focus to education, there are two major ways that I believe twitter can enhance my professional development.

The first way to grow my personal learning network (PLN) is to follow chats on twitter. The #hashtag makes it easy to follow a specific trend or idea. In the article, Educational Twitter Chats Calendar, the author Mr. Bryne embeds a calendar of educational chats compiled by Sarah Kaiser. But wait-- what is a twitter chat? Mr.Bryne says, " Twitter chats are scheduled events or conversations that use a specific hashtag in an attempt to organize a conversation around a particular topic." I follow several notable English teachers, including Jim Burke, the author of several classroom management/ movement books as well as Carol Jago, president of the National Council of Teachers of English. They often tweet with the hashtag #EngChat, but it took me months to realize they were actually participating in a discussion. The hashtag was just something that seemed to be what people used for fun. Once I found the archives, I started reading them to look for engaging classroom ideas. I am hooked! I usually can't participate in the chat because of the differences in the time zones. However, I hope to join one soon. I also plan on "cruising" the archives in search of new ideas.

A second way I hope to use twitter is to enhance the experience of students in my classroom community. The article I read about using twitter in the classroom was called " 28 Creative Ways Teachers Are Using Twitter", on the Best Colleges Online Blog. While all twenty eight ways were unique and creative in their own way, a few stood out.

1. I liked #9, which was to communicate with authors. I do many different forms of writing in the classroom along with reading workshop. Some authors that I follow do Q and A sessions, so it would be great to have students interact with them. Career Day was one of my favorite days in middle school, so perhaps doing career day virtually could be organized with the use of twitter and/or skype? The possibilities are endless.

2.#16 is the _____ of the day. It could be fun to do a vocabulary word of the day. Students could take turns tweeting the word of the day to make it participatory.

3.#22 suggests holding a twitter scavenger hunt. This could be done in several ways in my classroom. Students can find peers reading the same books, classrooms to interact with, projects to get involved in, and so on.

I hope to continue to learn more about twitter and the classroom. Students love to interact through the use of social networking, and this seems like an easy tool to bring to the learning environment.

A se