Journal #5: Twitter!

source: http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2012/twitter-logo-redesigned/

As for my own Twitter account: I now have 2. I have my own personal one, and the academic one that I created for this class. I have realized that Twitter only works when you have a number of followers and follow a number of people yourself. If it is just one and not the other (or neither,( Twitter is pretty useless. No one really follows my academic account, so it is pretty boring and there is no interactivity. I think this project would have worked much better if the whole GED 512 class was told to all follow each other in order to engage, interact and collaborate with each other.

I actually really loved the link provided about 53 ways to use Twitter in the classroom. My favorite idea was doing character studies with your students. This includes giving each student a character from a book and have them start an account under that persona, tweeting as if they were this person. This forces them to do a serious character analysis in order to tweet realistically. I also love the very similar idea of having students tweet as if they were a historical figure. For instance, tweeting as if they were Columbus or Lincoln and even having them interact with each other as these historical figures via tweets. That sound very fun and I bet it would truly engage the students in meaningful learning.