Twitter is a good medium for a person to learn. It is certainly a social phenomenon and enjoys great popularity. This website is actually a micro blogging site that allows only 140 characters. The micro blogging tool has a great potential to be used for formal learning both in conventional classroom and even through mobile technologies to suit mobile learners. Twitter is a great medium for teaching and learning. There are several ideas that are waiting to be exploited. Though Twitter can be used for purposes such as business, it has several applications in the field of education.

?Twit Board? notifies the students of any changes to the content in their courses, venues or any such important information. The students can be asked to read a chapter or an article. Their pr?cis or brief summary based on the key points can be posted. The main limit of Twitter is that only 140 characters are allowed. This demands a lot of academic discipline from the students. One can share hyperlinks through Twitter. This is a directed task. Each student can be asked to share the hyperlink to any informative site that they found. The students can be asked to follow the progress of a famous person and document it too.

Time Tweet is a wonderful way of learning about some past personality and this you can do by choosing a famous person and creating a twitter account. Selecting an image representing historical figures and also writing regular tweets regarding the role of that character or using the vocabulary used by that past personality brings more traffic to you and you can also learn many more things than expected. Micro Meet is a program that holds discussion concerning the subscribing students. Here everyone follows a group such that non miss the twitter stream. Students participate as agreed.

Micro Write is a progressive writing where students accept taking turns in contributing to some account. Lingua Tweeta is ideal for contemporary language learning. Sending tweets in some of the foreign languages and asking students to give feedback in the same language helps them in learning something new. Twitter Pals offer encouragement to the students in finding a pen pal and this features regular conversation over a period of time and either of them can know about their hobbies, friends, culture and family. Some useful links that is helpful in formal learning are Judy O'Connell: Twitter - a Teaching and Learning Tool, Melanie McBride: Classroom 2.0, David Parry: Teaching with Twitter (Video) and Gabriela Grosseck and Carmen Holotescu: Twitter for Educational Activities.

Filed under: Social Networking

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