Photo: Beth Hundey, Uinta Mountains
There are many great examples of assessments and activities on the web that involve using twitter to interact with students… but what about those instructors who would like to use twitter on a bit more of a casual basis? If you’re not assessing students, and just communicating, are there rules? Is it a free-for-all? Go wild?
Here are tips for the casually tweeting instructor by the casually tweeting instructor .
Setting up
- Create a hashtag unique to your class. Using this hashtag, students can see what you have said, but also follow the discussion of their classmates (provided they also use the hashtag, when relevent. Basically, a hashtag serves as a common discussion topic.
- Think up a hashtag. E.g. #litwestern #ENG2500
- Search for the hashtag in twitter. If nothing (or very little) is returned, this is a unique hashtag
- Tell students to include the hashtag in the posts intended to be shared with the class.
- You have now completed the most important task. #hashtag
- Ask students to follow you.
- Don’t follow students back (and tell them you’re not going to!). You can still see what they post about the class because they will either include your handle or the hashtag. You don’t need to know what else they are tweeting about, and it could cause problems if you do know what else they are tweeting about.
