Best Practice in using Twitter in Teaching and Learning

4 Steps to Twitter

 

Add your suggestions for Twitter tasks, activities, projects and assessments to the boxes below. Add them to the most relevant stage of learning. Don't forget to add your name as a contributor below!

 

 

Principles	Active Induction Tutor instructs, student accesses, socialisation, peer and tutor interactions, range of diagnostic/formative assessment	Guided Exploration Tutor guides, student extends, knowledge exploration, range of peer and tutor interactions, range of assessments	Facilitated Investigation Tutor coaches, student adopts, knowledge construction, peer/ tutor/external interactions, tutor/student-designed assessment	Self-organised Learner Tutor facilitates, student integrates, independent understanding and skills peer/ tutor/external interactions, student designed assessment, presentation of portfolio
E-Learning is designed with 4 phases that supports, scaffolds and increases learner independence with a range of active tasks, activities and projects, e.g.,	1. Students tweet expectations at start of learning programme 2. Students invent words and definitions beginning with twitt... and tweet 3. Students use hashtag to sort relevant tweets 4. Open a Twitter account and follow @{coursemoderator} and @{coursename} accounts*. 5. Send several tweets about yourself to create a stream that others can see to get to know you* 6. Tweet one thing which is going well in your organisation & one thing which you are keen to improve.	1. Students access case study and tweet questions/comments 2. Students use range of tools with Twitter 3. Complete a twitter circle* 4, Follow famous tweeters* 5. Students decide on project topic and tweet to tutor 6. Tweet a url that reference a point or supports an idea	1. Students tweet summary of learning 2. Students tweet questions/ideas to peers in order to achieve learning activities 3.  Students share updates and further resources to peers 4. Students deliver project presentation via Dimdim – audience tweet questions, comments, feedback 5. Tutor follows Student tweets on laptop while teaching 6. Students Tweet an opinion or defend a side	1. Students tweet reflections on learning. 2. Students tweet evaluations of learning programme 3. Students tweet reflections on their learning – project topic and ILT skills 4. Students choose whether to continue Twitter group for peer support, learning and  social networking 5. students to summarise key points from a groups' tweets 6. students form study groups and support each other when stressed 7. planned community service on Twitter
E-Learning is assessed for learning and aims to empower and engage learners, e.g.,

 

*Further detail for for Active Induction Activity 5:

• Link to an interesting article you saw on one of your favourite websites and make a brief comment like: This is why diets fail, self control is not natural. I'm off the hook: {insert link}
• Post a Quote you like: On tenacity: "Actually, I'm an overnight success. But it took twenty years" ~Monty Hall
• Fascinating statistics like: Did you know that Americans throw out 27% of the 350,000,000 pounds of food they buy each year. ~The Guardian 11 Jan 2010.
• What you ate but add some details like, "For lunch, noshed on honey turkey, tomato, and mixed greens on Ciabatta in the park."
• Your workout. Tweet your workouts to help stay accountable to your exercise regime. Tweet something like, "Ran 3 miles near the river. Did some flats and hills. Having endorphin high now smile"
• You overheard something funny. "OH 5 year old: If we put a towel over it maybe mummy won't notice the dog knocked over the paint." In Twitter speak, the letters OH are used for "Overheard."
• Some light commentary on what you'd choose and why you like Jen or Angelina, chicken or beef, brownies or cupcakes, boxers or briefs, Damon or Affleck, etc.
• Send a tweet with what you feel was the most important point from the introductory podcast about the course on the Moodle page.

 

Further detail for Guided Exploration Activity 3:

• 10 of the students each tweet a message (not containing the #{coursename} hashtag to make it trickier) that you've prepared containing the name of a subsequent person in the string. e.g. You've found me, you clever twitterer. Write down my twitter name and now go visit @{twitter_username} to find the next name. Each student can start with any tweet and it will lead them around all ten participants until the circle is complete. They then try to be the first to post the complete list of twitter usernames to the Moodle forum.

 

Further detail for Guided Exploration Activity 4:

• Can students find and follow five people or organisations relevant to their academic courses? How can you go about this? search.twitter.com, institutional sites, Twitter lists... Sign yourself up to twellow, we follow to locate interesting people to follow.

 

Thanks to the contributors:

Simon Ahern

Jane Whittaker

Jane Woods

Bridget Gormley 

Thomas Hunt

Rey Junco