The first benefit that I have found - the #hashtag. One would think that some agency should approve these things much like top-level domains, however since beginning to use Twitter, one of my first acts was to send a message to #byngtech (the one that I created for my school's tech inquiry group). All it took was to share the tag with one other teacher - our group's hashtag was born and ready to follow. What if someone else tweets "your a jerk, #byngtech!!!". Well, since I have saved a search for #byngtech, I'd see the posting, but it's simple to block that person - no more tweets from her (him?). This Twitter thing is a super wide-open system!
Twitter: The New face of the News
Twitter's profound effect on society has become much more clear to me in following the March 11 earthquake in north-eastern Japan. For the people who live in Kesennuma (気仙沼), all structures in the town were washed away by a tsunami that destroyed an enormous seawall designed to protect them. Residents who made it to safety were able to do so because of their prompt response to public announcements including those broadcast via the Earthquake Early Warning System. This system sends out information perhaps even before an earthquake happens, and was likely passed on to the town's twitter feed, immediately going to devices everywhere. In fact, I even got it before the live television coverage began. I was at home at the time, and received a Tweet to my phone that a large earthquake was happening in Japan. I immediately went to our TV and turned on NHK. I thought that a live broadcast from Japan should carry a report of such news, but regular programming continued for several minutes before text announcements began scrolling across the screen. Finally, programming was interrupted by earthquake reports.
In a separate example closer to home, my Twitter feed includes Tweets from a school board trustee who passed on what a local reporter had Tweeted earlier...
See the Winnipeg Free Press article about social media and the 2011 federal election.
To post photos to Twitter, I used Twitpic to upload a full-sized image (about 800 KB).
It is possible to do so via the Twitpic website, but I sent my first photo by email; the subject line became the text of the tweet. For normal images online, I would send a smaller one next time - the largest size is not necessary.
My Facebook feed was automatically updated like this:
Problems
My first question about twitter in the classroom is: "how can this be useful?" and "how can this be safe?". As Richardson puts it: "Twitter is a bit too Wild West for most school situations" (p. 88). Searching for this phrase online, I found a number of other student blogs who had quoted Richardson - possibly using his statement to support NOT using this tool with students. I had to try a couple of options.
Group Tweet
One answer was group tweet. It is supposed to let members of a group send direct messages to a set Twitter account. Those messages are then Tweeted to the members of the group (without showing up publicly. I made an attempt to set this up, but it is not intuitive and I'm not sure that all my messages are private.
The school/class twitter account that I set up to try: @39byng. I'll try it out with the people in my school's tech inquiry group - hopefully, we can figure it out in the lab - to really make this work, I think that you need a number of different people. In the end, it is highly likely that the effort it takes to set up, and the benefit at the end means that a Twitter group is probably not worth the effort.
Other possibilities
As a counterpoint to my rather mediocre experience with Twitter groups, I was encouraged by a posting by Shelly Blake-Plock who authors the blog "TeachPaperless". She suggests a number of activities that can be done using Twitter (of course, students need access to a computer or a tweetable device) and even has students tweet DURING some tests! (read her blog to find out more). In the final part of the post, she even answered my question about security - she has students change their username immediately after a session in the lab - simple solution to any possibility that an undesirable person may "follow" a student home.
Concluding Remarks
I think that twitter can be a useful way for students to collaborate on projects both in class and from their own devices. Thanks to TeachPaperless cited in the previous paragraph, I now have some methods to try out when I'm back in a school in September. For now, I am finding that the information, networking and professional development possibilities are seemingly endless.
