To Tweet, or not to Tweet...

...that is the question!

today's topic is about a Web 2.0 tool.  I chose Twitter.

Although Twitter is not new to me, the concept of trying Twitter with K-6 students is new to me!
Yes, yes, there would need to be parent permission and so forth, and it may not "work" as intended, but you never know until you try! And admittedly, this is not the best idea I have ever had, but I decided to think about it and brainstorm some ideas.

Ignoring social media such as Twitter is a disservice to today's students. The issue that we all struggle with is to what extent we discuss and use the media. The "problem" with social media like Twitter is that the inappropriatness is unpredictable.  (Example:  CNN.com is reliable for validity and content; "Joe's blog" can be anything that "Joe" decides to write. It can be lies, crazy, rumors, colorful language, curse words, etc.) But putting that aside....my brainstorm...

I can see several uses.   Some can be full Twitter use (tricky...I know) and some can be modfied Twitter use.  (Personally, I think if this is done it would have to be modified, but I shall continue...)

• What if students used the trending topics to determine and analyze trends?
• Students could use Twitter to see how many Tweets a business writes per day (Example: McDonalds) and what they are like (ads, news, ads disguised as news, etc)
• Students could write Tweets to practice the brevity needed for 140 characters or less.
• Students could connect with "keypals" in other areas (I am thinking of a person I know in France - perhaps with his class.  140 words is not an intimidating amount to write in a foreign language)
• Students could look at the Tweets of famous personalities (journalists, musicians, actors, sports players, etc.) to look at so many things (ads, news, self-promotion, etc.)
• Students could look at certain Tweets to determine how "creative" people needed to be to fit the 140 character limit
• Students could look at how many Tweets are sent via smartphones as opposed to PC/web based
• Students could track how/when/frequency of Tweets being Retweeted; make hypotheses as to why

Or, totally out of Twitter, students and teachers could "Tweet" in the classroom only (offline) could be done on a class bulletin board, or in a computer-based way (but closed to others).

Oh sure, I see a lot of problems with turning grade 6 students loose on Twitter, you know, not being "appropriate" for full Twitter use for 11 year olds, but in a modfied way, it could be useful, depending on the unit of study and learning objectives.