Twitter in the Classroom
Michael A. Britt, Ph.D.
Marist College
The Psych Files podcast
www.ThePsychFiles.com
What is Twitter?
• A 140 character ‘microblog”
• www.twitter.com
• You tweet about whatever you’d like
– Started out with people tweeting mundane things
– Has evolved to a more useful tool
• You find other people on twitter and “follow”
their tweets
• You can follow tweets on your homepage, but
most people use a “twitter client” like
Tweetdeck so you don’t have to go to
twitter.com. Tweets pop-up on your screen.
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Twitter Homepage
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Tweetdeck
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Additional Info on Twitter
• You can follow people who are tweeting about an
event by using the hashtag
– Ex: #haiti
– Ex: #epaconf
• Your tweets will go out to everyone who is following
you, but you can indicate that a tweet is intended for
a specific person by using the @ symbol at the
beginning of your tweet (however, everyone following you
will still see these @username tweets)
– @mbritt
• If you are following someone and that person is
following you, then you can send a direct message to
only that person using letter D and the person’s
twitter name:
– D mbritt
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How to Set Up Twitter for Your Class
1. Set up a twitter username for your class:
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Ex: brittpsy101
2. Tell your students to create a twitter account, then
go to www.twitter.com/brittpsy101 and follow you
3. Then anything you tweet will go out to all of your
students
4. Tell your students to put #brittpsy101 at the end of
their tweets so that everyone can set up a search
column called #brittpsy101 in Tweetdeck
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This way students can easily see anything that other
students tweet about
Tweets can also be received on mobile phones
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What Would We Tweet About?
• Websites or other resources relevant to class that
you come upon
– Students can comment on resources you’ve found and all
other students see these comments as well (like a
discussion thread that is “on the go
– Students can send messages like this as well
• Thoughts that occur to you after class that you forgot
to mention
• Remind students about assignments, due dates, etc.
• Students can follow experts on twitter and “retweet” what these experts say so that everyone in
class can read the quote (and decided to follow this
expert if they wish)
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What Would We Tweet About?
• Be radical: encourage twittering during class:
– Do in-class surveys (semi-anonymous if you or
your “twitter monitor” reports the class results to
your question)
– Ask quiz questions
– Tweets could be projected onto the wall, or
• You designate your twitter monitor to surface questions
to you
– A way to get participation from shy students
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Some Reactions from Teachers
• “I was prepping for a lecture and wanted to
know if students shared a particular movie
reference, I asked via Twitter and got instant
responses.”
• “I have have answered twitter colleagues’
questions like “have you done this
successfully”? also I follow a terrific colleague
who links to amazing articles relevant to
teaching & our discipline”
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Some Reactions from Teachers
• “The immediacy of the messages helped the students
feel like more of a community”
• “Once students started Twittering I think they
developed a sense of each other as people beyond
the classroom space, rather than just students they
saw twice a week for an hour and a half. As a result,
classroom conversation became more productive
as people were more willing to talk, and [be] more
respectful of others.
• “When something came up outside of class that
reminded them of material from class time it often got
twittered. This served as a
reinforcement/connection between the material
and the “real world”.
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Concerns
• I must admit that when I first heard about Twitter I
thought it represented the apex of what concerns me
about internet technology: sound-bite
communication.
– also worry about the way that they too easily lead to less
time for conversation and how these conversations often
reduce to self-centered statements.
– Then I read an article by Clive Thompson at Wired. Clive’s
article convinced me that perhaps it was worth giving Twitter
a try. At this point I have to say, I am so glad that I did.”
• Sometimes students tweet unimportant information
• Some students, depending on their cell phone plan,
can get charged if they set up tweets to be sent to
their phone, so you have to make sure they look into
this first.
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Useful Twitter Tools
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http://www.tweetdeck.com
http://search.twitter.com/
http://www.twitscoop.com/
http://twopular.com/
http://whatthetrend.com/
http://140it.com/
http://tweetshrink.com/
http://tweetmeme.com/
http://monitter.com/
http://cotweet.com/
http://socialmouths.
http://tweetpsych.com/
http://tweetpsych.com/
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Some Psychology “Twitterers”
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mbritt
PsychNews
Highschoolpsych
PsyBlog
NewPsychologist
mediapsychology
PsyProf
psych101
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