Liam, graduated from Notre Dame last year, and because of the power of the virtual world, is able to assist students who are now enrolled in the course he excelled at!!
Lastly, Twitter is free and the possibilities are limitless!
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
The power of Twitter
Recently, a student of mine needed some help. Instead of giving up, she picked up her phone, logged onto Twitter, and her and I had the following conversation:
She was able to explain her thought process in under 144 characters. What happened next, made me smile even more!! I asked her if she understood the first concept of the class, when she expressed that she has not had a chance to look at it yet, something amazing occurred. Check below:
I have been using Twitter this year for AP Calculus in the same way along with a discussion board on my class website. I have had many instructional conversations with students that "cleared up" some of their comprehension issues and they were able to continue on with their assignment.
ReplyDeleteTim Brown
Allen Park High School
Allen Park, MI
I find this very interesting. Do you have one twitter account for work and personal use? Or do you separate them and have two accounts?
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Michelle
AP Cal Teacher
A couple of thoughts and suggestions:
ReplyDeletea) does your school district have a policy about communication with students outside of school channels? Many do. While you may think this is totally professional and a wonderful use of social media there have been several cases where "conversations" have gone bad and school districts are stuck because they have no audit trail of what happened (compared to using an official school district e-mail account.
b) once you get the ball rolling I think it is even better if these conversations happened without teacher intervention
1. The students learn to work collaboratively
2. It relieves you of being available 24 x 7. What would have happened in the above scenario if you were out all evening say at a play or movie? Would you monitor your Twitter account so you are available to answer questions all the time?
Amen to the usefulness of social media; both you and your student are pretty skilful in navigating the word limit given per tweet. Peace.
ReplyDelete