I have to admit, learning to use Twitter is definitely overwhelming.
As a new member of the popular social networking service, I felt a little lost navigating through the app on my phone. There was so much I needed to learn about tweeting, retweeting, hashtags, replies, following, following back, and much more. I started to play around and tried to explore Twitter by viewing different profiles, accounts, and reading different articles. I was amazed to find so many interesting resources and inspirational ideas about teaching, technology, education, etc. This is definitely a great tool to connect and learn with other educators and to expand my professional learning network.
Just as Twitter is a way for me to connect to other educators and expand my PLN, this would be a great way for students to connect as well. Twitter allows for teachers and students to have a place to share common interests and explore different resources. With the use of Twitter in the classroom, students have a place to share their ideas, projects, opinions and thoughts with parents, other students or educators, and with the community.
I was recently reading an article about ways that technology can open up different possibilities for students with diverse needs. With the use of technology, it can reduce communication barriers for nonverbal students. Many students who are nonverbal use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) as their primary means of communication. The iPad AAC app, called Proloquo2Go, interfaces directly with Twitter. As a teacher explains in the article, she has found that by involving her students in online global collaboration projects through Twitter and other online tools, they can communicate using their primary means of communication and not have any barriers. Everyone’s communicating the same way.
Paddra Shing 