Twitter Chats
Description:
Twitter is a open social media platform that allows users to connect and engage in dialogue with individuals and groups from around the world. As a Connected Educator, you may be familiar with this as creating your own account was a requirement at the beginning of the year. In addition to utilizing this resource for professional development purposes, it can also be a valuable tool for your students to connect and collaborate with other classrooms around the world. While there are many amazing opportunities for student collaboration using Twitter, one that we've found particularly valuable is "Classroom Twitter Chats". In this project, numerous classrooms participate in a group conversation that revolves around a specific topic that has been decided by the teacher leaders. This typically involves the creation of 4-5 engaging questions that will lead to meaningful discussions between students in all classrooms. On the day of the chat, these questions are tweeted out one at a time, every 5-10 minutes, which provides students the opportunity to have a small group discussion in their classrooms before responding on Twitter.
Twitter is a open social media platform that allows users to connect and engage in dialogue with individuals and groups from around the world. As a Connected Educator, you may be familiar with this as creating your own account was a requirement at the beginning of the year. In addition to utilizing this resource for professional development purposes, it can also be a valuable tool for your students to connect and collaborate with other classrooms around the world. While there are many amazing opportunities for student collaboration using Twitter, one that we've found particularly valuable is "Classroom Twitter Chats". In this project, numerous classrooms participate in a group conversation that revolves around a specific topic that has been decided by the teacher leaders. This typically involves the creation of 4-5 engaging questions that will lead to meaningful discussions between students in all classrooms. On the day of the chat, these questions are tweeted out one at a time, every 5-10 minutes, which provides students the opportunity to have a small group discussion in their classrooms before responding on Twitter.
Collaboration:
Creating a Twitter Chat is a simple process that can be accomplished with relatively little preparation time. Below are a few important ideas that you may want to keep in mind when planning your own chat:
Creating a Twitter Chat is a simple process that can be accomplished with relatively little preparation time. Below are a few important ideas that you may want to keep in mind when planning your own chat:
Before the Chat
- The Topic: To begin, it's important to first decide on a topic that you would like to explore with your students - ex. Pink Shirt Day.
- Classrooms: Once, you've decided on a topic, the next thing you want to do is reach out to other teachers with grade alike classrooms that you would like to involve in your chat. While exact grade matches aren't necessary, it does work better to for the flow of the conversation if students are around the same Grade/Interest level. You can accomplish this using teachers in your own division, or by reaching out on twitter to see if there are any other classrooms around the world that would be interested in participating.
- The Hashtag: It's very important that you create a unique Hashtag for your chat, as this will become the home base for all twitter responses in your chat. ex. #mystudentchat. *It's important to create a hashtag that hasn't been used before so students are able to easily follow the chat and it is not interrupted with other tweets outside your chat.
- The Questions: Since the questions will be the basis for your chat, it's a good idea to take some time to create meaningful-open ended questions that will promote engaging discussion between students. You may also want to email these out to the other classroom teachers ahead of time so they have a chance to review them ahead of time.
During the Chat
- Introductions: To begin the chat, have all the teachers introduce their classes once the live chat has begun.
- Questions: The lead teacher will be responsible for tweeting out the questions for the students to respond to. You can either have the students following along on their own devices or project the live Twitter feed on your projector. When tweeting the questions, be sure to indicate what question it is, by using the letter "Q" and the question number before you tweet. This will help to keep your questions organized and will help students to find the question in the twitter feed.
- Student Answers: All student answers need to start their tweet with the letter "A" as well as the number of the question they are answering ex. "A1". This shows which question they are responding to, so other participants understand the context of their tweet and are able reply accordingly. At the end of each tweet, students will also need to include the Twitter Chat Hashtag so other participants are able to view their response.
Student Response Options: There are two ways you can run your classroom when participating in a Twitter Chat and the method you decide to implement is entirely up to you and your comfort level you have with your students.
Option One: You can have students work in small groups and respond using your classroom account. This would require you to temporarily change your account password before the chat and enable groups to log in on your account.
Option Two: You can project the chat on your whiteboard and have the students use index cards to hand in responses with their names, and type the answers for them so they can follow along in small groups.
Important Note:
Be sure that students are not using personal accounts for the chat, so all responses are coming from your classroom Twitter account. This is incredibly important so teachers are able to monitor all their content during the chat as they are responsible for ensuring their students are using Twitter responsibly and are deleting any inappropriate content immediately.
Be sure that students are not using personal accounts for the chat, so all responses are coming from your classroom Twitter account. This is incredibly important so teachers are able to monitor all their content during the chat as they are responsible for ensuring their students are using Twitter responsibly and are deleting any inappropriate content immediately.
Benefits:
- Twitter Chats "Flatten the Walls" of the classroom and allows them to connect and collaborate with other students around the world.
- Provides students with the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue on issues/topics that are of interest to them.
- The experience provides opportunities to review Digital Citizenship concepts, and students are able to practice responsible digital participation.
- Through their responses, students are able to apply critical thinking skills, draw on personal experiences, and explore connections in the world around them.