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In his post “What Did You Create Today?” (http://weblogg-ed.com 08/22/09), Will Richardson shares some great possibilities that could be used in a daily tweet: What did you teach others? What unanswered questions are you struggling with? How did you change the world in some small (or big) way? What’s something your teachers learned today? What did you share with the world?

Use Twitter as a tool to capture student voice by having them respond to class lectures

Remind students that this is their academic account and everything on there should be appropriate. Discuss consequences for inappropriate use. Encourage students to follow a standard protocol for their account names that reveals identity to only those partaking. One way to do this is having students use the first three letters of their last name, first three letters of their first name, and middle initial. For instance my name, Lisa Michelle Nielsen would be Niemlis. This should be set up as a whole class activity so all students can be walked through the account set up together to provide clarity on account set up. Next the teacher should explain to students how they will be using tags. Tags allow the teacher and students to follow tweets. Look at the "Trending Topics" in the right hand navigation for popular tags. Let students click on them and share what they notice about tagging. Then the teacher can share with students the tags they will be using. There may be a school tag (i.e. Susan B. Anthony High School would be SBAHS), a class tag, and tags for particular activities or areas of study.Next the students need to set their twitter accounts up to receive text updates. They do this by entering their phone number at http://twitter.com/devices. They will then enter Twitter into their phone with this number: 40404.

In terms of ongoing professional development, the good news is that one of the best, most accessible ways to get up to speed on technology integration and training options is through technology itself. The Web provides abundant opportunities for both self-directed education and more structured training -- great ways to use immersion to become familiar with new technology tools and processes.

SMILE activities teach science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and are developed by a wide range of organizations working with diverse audiences.

SMILE is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation under the National STEM Education Distributed Learning Program (Award Number 0735007).