Nine Reasons to Twitter in Schools

Walker, L., (2009, April 16). Nine Reasons to Twitter in Schools. Retrieved from http://www.techlearning.com/article/17340

This article points out why Twitter should be used in the class room.  The author states that it is “keeping up with the times, allows teachers and students to follow events that are local or global, and allows teachers to keep in touch with other teachers who maybe resources that are fuller and ‘more useful than an ordinary google search’”.  The author also says that learning how to express yourself in “less than 140 characters is a great discipline to develop”, and that it is easy to use. In fact the hardest part about Twitter is getting it unblocked in your school’s computer.

While the article is cute, I didn’t find it very convincing. I don’t see why Twitter needs to be in our classrooms.  Like much of social media I find it mainly a distraction, or a “time suck”, and we don’t need any more of these in our classes.  Teachers who want to use Twitter as a resource to workshop with other educators can simply use it on their home computers.  I am not convinced that it is useful for teachers to correspond to their students through social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, as this may be awkward for students who feel that their teachers are “lurking” or “spying” on them.  I can understand and see the usefulness of blogs or a class website, or a private social media site for a class in education.  However I remain unsure about social media, especially large public sites like Facebook and Twitter.