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instructions, ideas and tips on how to use twitter

"Because social-networking tools are forums for personalized, socially focused conversations, the communities that spring from these tools are person/people-centered. As Porter explained, this person/people-centeredness results in the value of participation being opaque for anyone who is not participating. To address this problem, we made sure that students who chose not to participate (because the value of participation is opaque for them) had access to our tweets by incorporating an RSS feed-like Twitter widget in our LMS. (See Figure 5.) Many widgets like these can be found online, although we should note that this particular widget has limitations. As seen in the example in Figure 5, the widget only displays Joni's posts, not the back-and-forth exchanges between her and members of her network. Students might incorrectly assume that the interaction is one-sided and less than dynamic. Besides keeping students apprised of the resources we shared via Twitter, however, this widget allowed them to vicariously discover Twitter's value. Some students later chose to join us in Twitter because they had a better understanding of what they were getting into because its value was less opaque. Ultimately, we found that Twitter helped us achieve our student-engagement objective, but we also quickly discovered that students' Twitter participation led to other notable instructional outcomes."

February 2010 | Volume 67 | Number 5 Meeting Students Where They Are Pages 73-74 Why Teachers Should Try Twitter William M. Ferriter I've got an embarrassing confession to make: Until recently, I wasn't convinced that differentiating learning opportunities for students really mattered. Like many teachers, I would deliver one lesson each day, keeping my fingers crossed that I met everyone's needs. And even though I've always had a sense for the strengths and weaknesses of my individual students, I rarely drew on that knowledge to make specific changes in instruction or assignments.

Twitter guide book

Handy little instructional vid for tweetdeck