Twitter In The Classroom 1.0

The University of Wisconsin – Stout, Wisconsin’s Polytechnic University is always looking for ways to practically implement technology to benefit their students.  Earlier this month I suggested a new way to use the micro-blogging service Twitter in the classroom to university administrators.  As of this summer, our communications office used Twitter as a broadcast platform to announce news and at least one professor in the English department used Twitter in the classroom to communicate with her students.  The idea I proposed to administrators was a bit more engaging than any current use of Twitter on campus.

Why use Twitter as a passive form of micro-emailing like leaving DM’s for professors when it can be a real-time virtual platform.  I suggested that professors who have appropriate courses should display Twitter on the projector screens in the front of the classroom.  With third-party software like Tweetdeck the professor can follow a custom hashtag for her class and have it auto-refresh at pre-determined intervals.  This allows for a virtual conversation to take place between students as the professor lectures on a topic.

The professor can skim over the ongoing Twitter conversation during his or her lecture and comment on what students have been saying, this will deepen the lecture and make it more personable to the ‘pulse of the students’ who are taking it in.  Giving every student a digital voice will cater to shy students who have things they’d like to say, but don’t out of fear of embarrassment.

Once out of the classroom, the student will be able to go back and re-read comments from any lecture. Re-reading his own tweets and those of his peers will help during weekly assignments and provide a platform for out of class discussion.

Even if a professor is ill or out of town, they can login to Twitter and watch their students comment and discuss that day’s lecture and even jump in the conversation while not present.

Twitter is a valuable communication tool but evolution of ‘real-time’ communication will continue well beyond the walls of Twitter, most notably with Google Wave in the next year or so.  This idea is certainly an experimental one with many variables that can lead towards success or failure of its use.  Some are obvious yet some are unforeseen.  It is my hope that professors at UW-Stout will begin to utilize this means of communicating to aid learning and engagement.