Twitter in the classroom???

Has the world gone twitter mad???

I recently attended an inset session that showed how you can use twitter as a teaching tool. At first, I didn't know what to make of this, as the session was run by a teacher who was using it for a humanities subject. Once I had googled the use of twitter in the classroom, I grasped a few brilliant uses of it in the classroom for specifically maths...

Use 1: using it to engage the students. At A level you would have thought all students will be engaged by the subjects they choose but this is not the case! If you follow various mathematicians and retweet comments made by them you will find this may actually inspire a lot of students!

Use 2: a small tweet for due dates of home works or constant reminders for revision will always help!

Use 3: daily/ weekly short puzzles. I say short as it needs to be less than 140 characters. Another option would be to put up a link for a problem. This will get students to think outside the box even when they aren't in the classroom.

These are the main uses I have found so far. There are many more uses that are out there but these will be mentioned as soon as I have found them and gotten to grips with the use of twitter. Another useful point I should make is that there is an option to create lists on twitter so you can group up your different classes and then send tweets accordingly.

As I have only just started using twitter I will not be putting up a link. I will wait till later on in the year when I have added on the new classes at the start of term before I link it onto this blog. I think it should be a very useful tool to use as it is a way of communicating with students even when they are not in college. E.g. If a student is struggling with a question or a concept they can tweet you and pretty much get an immediate response rather than having to wait for the next class.

I hope I have inspired you to use this tool and fingers crossed if it works for me and I will hopefully be raving on about it later on in the year!