Using twitter in the classroom – from the perspective of students

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**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Craig Kemp

This year as I reflect on 4 terms of amazing learning within my school here in Singapore I asked the students about their highlights. Using twitter in the classroom was one of those.

This year we trialled the use of Twitter as a tool to support student learning in the classroom. One major impact was its use in the development of a new modern learning environment that is currently being implemented ready for the 2015 school year.

I asked the students involved a little bit about their use of Twitter to dig a little deeper into what makes them tick when learning through Social Media. Here are some of their responses:

I remember the thrill of getting instant replies
I loved the ideas that we got from people from all over the world
The ideas we got from other students and teachers were amazing because we didn’t think of them but they were so great and we are using them in the design of our learning environment
It was a great way to see other people’s opinions
It felt a little strange at first because we didn’t know who we were talking to, but once we read their profiles we felt more comfortable
It was really exciting because there were so many different ideas and opinions to choose from
People that replied to our questions were friendly and kind
Everyone was willing to help
Within an hour we got to ask more than 15 questions and get answers to all of them
We got several links, videos and articles to help us with our research in a 1 hour lesson
It was amazing to connect with other students and teachers who have been through the same situation as us
We made some connections that wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t used Social Media
We discussed ideas with a designer that we ended up connecting with via Google Hangouts

All in all this was an incredible experience that I highly recommend to all educators. WIth the support of my school and utilising the excellent digital citizenship skills of my students we were able to master Social Media use. Bring on 2015 and the successful use of social media to support a more diverse range of learning.

This post originally appeared on Mr. Kemp’s blog, and was republished with permission.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here.

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Craig is a New Zealand born educator with over 10 years experience both in the classroom and in leadership. He is an enthusiastic, 21st century change agent that is passionate about every aspect of education and making a difference.

3 comments

Using twitter in the classroom – from the... 8 June, 2015 at 14:48 Reply

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Robin 14 May, 2017 at 22:37 Reply

I love seeing my students get excited and learning from other people’s opinions and comments. Twitter is a great tool for the classroom.

I’ve found a tool called GroupTweet that allows my students to all easily Tweet from our classroom account. I find it works much better than simply using a hashtag as students can simply follow tweets from the class account instead of having to setup hashtag searches or follow every other student in the class.