Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

11.29.11 | If you’re not one of the 300 million Twitter users, you might be very soon. Everyone from nonprofits to my neighborhood grocery store is tweeting these days, and novel uses in the classroom are growing just as fast.

It’s been a while since we’ve written about Twitter, and there were several really helpful posts before the holiday that we wanted to point folks to that demonstrate new ways for teachers and students to use social media to create community.

Blogging at Web 2.0 Classroom, Steven Anderson reminds us that Twitter can be a very powerful search engine, especially with effective use of hashtags. If you don’t know what a hashtag is, Anderson points to this helpful definition from the Twitter fan wiki: “a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets.” 

Anderson helped start #edchat, which, in his words, has become “a gathering place for resources and meaningful conversations and is a great way for those new to Twitter to get engaged in a very easy way and see the value that Twitter can offer the profession.” Participants vote on topics (via twtpoll.com) each week and then discuss every Tuesday, just by adding #edchat to their tweets.

Recent discussions have been on the relationship and tension between IT folks and classroom teachers, homework policies, one laptop programs, and the role of poverty in student learning. You can propose topics via the Educator PLN Ning group. Watch this great video for more information, or join the chats every Tuesday at 12 p.m. and 7 p.m. EST.

But educators don’t necessarily need to join a big discussion like #edchat to connect with colleagues. You can find hashtags for social studies teachers, librarians, administrators, early childhood educators and more—all sharing information and resources on Twitter. Anderson encourages educators new to Twitter to search and browse—and, if they don’t find what they’re looking for, to create their own hashtags.

In addition to using hashtags to gather resources, George Couros, a school principal at Forest Green School and Connections for Learning in Alberta, Canada, has a great post on using hashtags in the classroom. Couros suggests hashtags for individual classes, school departments or projects that can then be shared and searched for later use. For example:

Figure out a hashtag that can be used for the same subject area across your school. If you are going to use a hashtag for something like Grade 10 Chemistry, create it with all of the teachers in your school that teach that same subject. This knocks down the physical walls as well as time barriers of classes. You can easily share the learning between the same course that is delivered at different time using this hashtag. Once it is figured it out, share it with the school, teachers, and parents.

Couros says hashtags can help create learning communities and help “tap into the wisdom of your entire class.” Additionally, using Twitter helps students create a “positive digital footprint” and is yet another use of social media for learning. Both Couros and Anderson recommend waiting to sign up kids (or teachers for that matter) on Twitter until they’ve already seen the value – rather than vice versa. You can search and follow hashtags without joining. Read Couros’ full post here.

And finally, a Twitter experiment at the University of Texas-Dallas, recently posted at The National Writing Project’s Digital Is site, highlights the really exciting possibilities for engaging students in classroom discussion. In the video below, watch how history professor Monica Rankin uses Twitter in her American history course to get all of the students participating. Rankin has summarized her learnings here.

We’ll have more on using microblogging to bring history lessons to life later this week. If you’re an educator using Twitter in your classroom, please do share your experiences in the comments. We’d love to hear about them.