Twitter in the Writing Classroom

As a relatively new social media site, Twitter is a deliberately simple, very popular "micro-blogging" site. With an allowed message length of only 140 characters (not words, remember), the site limits users to concise posts, or "tweets."

Before we address writing through the site, we should address using Twitter itself. Most students will probably be very familiar with Twitter, but should any student--or the professor--need help getting started on the site, Howcast put together a great video:



In the article 100 Ways to Teach With Twitter, K. Walsh compiles a list of some great ways to use the site in the classroom. While there is seemingly endless list of ways to use Twitter in any class, I'd like to take a look at some ways to use that directly relate to us English folks.

It should be noted, here, that Walsh sets the article up as series of links to individual articles which include the ways to use Twitter in the classroom. It is a little tedious at times to sift through these different articles, but the suggestions provided in the articles make the effort worthwhile.

In one such article, Sonja Cole's "25 Ways to Teach with Twitter," she provides suggestions such as replying to questions, joining educational groups, or posting responses to a book that is being read by a group. These suggestions might be translated into things such as making class-based groups where students can discuss readings and assignments, teachers answering student questions about course content, and following news, pop culture, or literary groups which are relevant to the course.

In another linked article posted to AdemHack entitled "Twitter for Academia," there are even more specific examples of how to use the popular social networking site in class. One suggestion included what was called "class chatter" where conversations relevant to class can be carried on outside of the course through Twitter. Other suggestions included having students visit the site's public timeline to "get a sense of the world," track words to see how and where they are used in tweets, and having students simply use the site as a public "notepad" to share topics, news, and issues relevant to class.

Two of my favorite suggestions for Twitter come from the same article listed above. One of these suggestions in to teach grammar through the site. Because tweets are so short, proper use of spelling and grammar is of the utmost importance. After all, how many tweets are plagued with spelling and grammar problems? Too many to count, and more than enough to study and correct.

The second suggestion is to have students co-author a story where each student in class adds to what the student before him or her had written in a previous tweet. This would continue until each student had written 140 characters worth of the story in an individual tweet. Of course, this is the same exercise that takes place on paper, but just transposed to the Internet.

Using the site Twitterfall.com is yet another way to use Twitter which (to my knowledge) was not mentioned in this article or the linked pages. Students can use the site to see the most up-to-date tweets on a term or phrase they searched for. This, in turn, can guide them to relevant articles and discussions of specific topics.

These examples are only a small handful of ways to use Twitter in the writing class. I encourage you to peruse the above articles and sites, talk to other teachers using Twitter, and to just try something new that seems interesting and worthwhile.