Twitter Me This

[barclay_barrios]

As I indicated in my last post, my assistant Mike Shier has developed what I think is a genius use of cell phones in the classroom. He has the entire class establish Twitter accounts and then follow everyone else in the class. What he ends up with is a super-mobile, super-light virtual classroom. Mike will ask students to Tweet questions about the new reading, offering a starting place for class discussion.  He’ll have them Tweet the arguments of their papers for quick, mass-class peer feedback.  He’ll have them Tweet the most persistent error students found while reading peer’s papers in peer review. I have to admit I’m envious that he thought this all up. Twitter is perfect: you don’t need a computer, just a cell phone that can text. The 140-character limit encourages conciseness. The whole system is simple to use. And students actually enjoy it. I’m going to be adopting this system for my class this summer. I find other systems, like Blackboard, clumsy, clunky, and cluttered. I’m ready for something lighter, smaller, easier. I’m ready for Twitter.