Don’t know how many are current Twitterers; of course, that’s one of the first questions I’ll ask of them (I don’t get them til a week from today).

Dan’s point is well-taken, but one of the draws of this technology is the ease of setup and use. I can’t see this taking exceptionally long to teach them how to use, and the potential payoff for engagement down the line makes it a worthwhile (minimal) investment of time (of course, if it does take forever, or they don’t get it, I’ll need to re-evaluate).

Also, in that conversation you linked, there was talk of meeting standards. Media literacy (including digital media/Internet) is one of the major NJ Core Content Curriculum Standards for English, so I feel I can safely get my kids online and looking around while still addressing the state mandates.

Not sure about the daily tweet idea; maybe weekly (or semi-regularly; still not sure how I feel about instituting a regimented schedule yet). I think your idea of a student-led tweet is a good one; I’ll tuck it away for later contemplation.

I really want to be careful in how I roll this out. I want there to be a sense of community outside of class, but I don’t want them to feel that I’m totally encroaching on their at-home time. It’ll be a delicate line to walk, but I don’t see how I’m planning to do this as being any more of an encroachment than their (almost) nightly reading homework.

Totally with you on the silly intro tweets, just to get their feet wet. To build upon, maybe a scavenger hunt to have them tweet back links to something? I can see this being most useful when it comes to their research projects.

Thanks for these thoughts & questions; in blogging about this (as opposed to just doing it without an audience), I’m hoping for feedback that can help me shape this, as well as maybe providing a resource to the many folks out there who are saying, “This seems like a cool tool, but how can I use it in education?” Regardless of my result, I’m hoping it’s educational to someone.

first, good luck on this! like some others, i’ll be looking forward to seeing what sort of progress you make on this.

question: how many of your students do you think already regularly use twitter?

related doubt: dan meyer expresses it succinctly here: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=47

reason for hope: seems like you have the correct view, that twitter is a way to extend the classroom time and expand the social community. if it takes too much time to teach and you can do it better w’ paper/pencil, you should just scrap it.

random unasked for thought/brainstorm: how about you assign each student a daily tweet? something like a daily current event article or opinion paper. no idea how this could work, as i don’t use twitter/pounce/jaiku.

my ramble continues: weekly, not daily, twitter activity, to take less of the time pressure off. one student / set of students leads / moderates by tweeting a statement & question. rest of class must answer by the end of the week. moderating student(s) choose the best answer.

should start out non-academic, just to get students used to twitter / the format. eg, what’s the silliest outfit you ever saw?

well.

hope you enjoyed this suddenly long comment!

i’m enjoying reading what you’re up to.

-j