Tweets on Twittering,

Going back into a previously discussed assignment on Twittering, I focused on the article “Twitter for Academia” by Dave Parry. First of all, I enjoyed reading his work. I liked the fact that I could relate to his encounter to Twitter. He did so with hesitation especially when it came to applying it to his classroom. Once he made the decision to use this technology, he did find several benefits for its use. It fostered inside and outside classroom discussions that eventually encouraged blogging on these ideas. Twittering allowed the students to get to know each other better; it also allowed Parry to get to know his students better. The fact that twitter is global makes it interesting to students. They get to see what people all over the world are up to. The interesting fact that Parry pointed out is how you may find blogs in a variety of languages. That’s so cool! I never really thought of that. Twittering allows you to track words and events; it provides instant feedback. You can find out about topics that interest you in your profession or a profession that you are interested in. What would be attractive to students that I teach on the middle school level is the fact that they can tweet a celebrity!!!!!!! How cool is that???? What may be interesting to a teacher is Parry’s point on how Twitter is “good for teaching grammar.” As the article mentioned, twittering allows for “teachable moments.” It also allows teachers to teach grammar in reverse. While students have a limited amount of space to convey their thoughts, they must be mindful of each type of punctuation that they use due to the fact that the 140 character maximum can often lead to “ambiguous” messages. Still, Twitter allows students to brainstorm and share ideas. It can also make writing assignments, such as round-robin, fun!:) I recommend that teachers read this article because it is successful in encouraging teachers to incorporate this type of technology into the classroom.