Comments on: Twitter in the classroom?

By: Monica Rankin

Monica Rankin — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:51:51 +0000

Your biggest challenge/issue seems to be that you are trying to engage 700 students in a productive setting. My experience with 90 students was that such a large group can become chaotic very quickly. And it becomes difficult to manage so many tweets if they are all posting simultaneously. I like the idea of setting up smaller “communities” – I would think that 90-100 students is about the maximum that you would want to work with in a given community. You might assign each community a different topic for discussion but allow everyone to follow each community’s tweets.

If you want to follow all of the students, then I definitely recommend setting up a separate account. But that might not be necessary if you use hashtags to track topics.

Regarding projecting the feed – if all students have access to a computer in the classroom, this will not be necessary. But if you have students using cell phones to tweet, you should consider projecting the feed. For my class, the projected feed was the only access many students had to the real-time tweets.

Regarding privacy, my administration suggested I make the twitter participation “optional” and give students a way to contribute to discussions without posting public comments. Allowing them to block their stream may accomplish this – but check with your administration.

By: Wednesday Round Up #77 « Neuroanthropology

Wednesday Round Up #77 « Neuroanthropology — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:06:28 +0000

[...] Gravlee, Twitter in the Classroom? Will he take the plunge with a big class? Initial considerations and a request for [...]

By: Lance Gravlee

Lance Gravlee — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:11:58 +0000

@Bridgett: That’s an interesting idea. I see a parallel between your suggestion about communities and the small groups Monica Rankin set up in class. Her students would post the most interesting ideas and questions from each group to Twitter. But it also seems to me that the potential value of Twitter is the cross-cutting communication, so that people can follow the conversation in other small groups (or communities).

@Dave: Thanks for your very helpful suggestions. The TAs are on board, so we’ll give it a shot. I’m eager to see how the clickers and Twitter work together in class (or not).

By: Dave Parry

Dave Parry — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:12:32 +0000

I have never used it for a large class, so Monica is probably the person best equipped to give you feedback on this but for what it is worth here are my thoughts:

-Definitely have TAs monitor, moderate it during class, as they can actually get a sense of what students are having trouble with. Also students being aware that the TAs will/are monitoring probably increases the quality of tweet.

-I think Twitter operates totally different from clickers in the classroom think of it as the qualitative feedback to the quantative feedback of clickers.

-Relating course material. Don’t worry about it, not everyone will see everything, but that’s the nature of Twitter. Not necessarily for long format discussions, but to point to places where the long format takes place. Try pointing students to a blog post on which they can comment. Plus you and the TAs don’t have to comment/tweet about everything you find interesting, if done right the students will do this as well and further build the “cloud” of information.

-Forget following everyone. Just set up an official account for the class, make sure everyone follows it. The account doesn’t have to follow everyone. They would all then get any @replies directed at the account, and teach them to use hashtags. Also get a Twitter client for you and your TAs that handles mutliple accounts, that way you can each have your own personal ones but easily switch to the class one.

-Monica broadcasted the feed, at times at least, behind her. I am not sure how productive this is, or perhpas how distracting.

-Forget ethics, students have to learn to be public with their knowledge, it is a necessary skill to learn if they are going to succeed. They need to learn how to participate in the public network while maintaining their own level of “privacy.” This might mean that they block their stream from the public, tweet under an alias or whatever, but go open or go home, closed networks like edmodo are only useful in the k-12 context where there are serious legal restrictions.

By: Bridgett Rahim-Williams

Bridgett Rahim-Williams — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:11:38 +0000

I am not familiar with how Twitter is set up, but here’s an idea. How about setting up Twitter “communities” within your class? The “communities” are like suburbs of a city (your class of 700). Each Twitter “community” could set up its structure for interacting in the class and for holding “town hall meetings” (the group discussions on topics). The group could even select (and rotate membership of) a community council to call meetings of interest to the community. These town hall meetings are for hot topics needing the “community’s” attentioin. For manageability, TAs could monitor communities of 100 students (depending on how many TAs you have).

If there are 7 “communities,” the communities at different times can meet on Twitter to discuss key issues and perspectives associated with class topics.

Just a little brainstorming. I look forward to hearing how your Twitter classroom experience works out.

Cheers,
Bridgett