Use a Tweet Aggregator for Class Twitter Chats

Introduction

If you have not been using Twitter in your classroom, you are really missing out on a great way to engage students and open up academic discussion.  If you perform an internet search on "Twitter in the classroom," you will find a multitude of good blog posts on using the technology for learning.  One of my favorites is at the great blog, Edudemic.

Since so much has been written about Twitter in education, this post will concentrate on how to efficiently conduct a Twitter chat with your students using a Tweet aggregator.

Quick How To

1. Create a teacher Twitter account.

2. Have students create a Twitter account if they do not already have one. (Note: They do not need to follow your account. But, you will need a list of their Twitter handles to match to their real names.)

3.  Create a class/chat hashtag that students can use to collect the responses via search.

4.  Join and have students join either Tweetdeck or Hootsuite.

5.  Set a date and time for the chat.

6.  Set the topic.

7.  Generate a list of questions that you will use to guide the discussion.

8.  At the time of the chat, send out an introductory message.  Make sure that all students know to use your hashtag to aggregate the tweets.

9.  Every 5-10 minutes, post one of your questions for students to answer.

10.  As students answer and discuss, moderate with tweets to keep them on topic.

More Information

Twitter is a relatively basic web app.  It simply posts the comments of users that you follow into one long stream (called a timeline by Twitter).  Originally, the timeline was unfiltered.  Now, however, due to the number of people that most users follow, the timeline is filtered.  Regardless, when you are on Twitter, you will notice that there are an absurd number of posts every second to the timeline if you are following even just a few people.  If you leave your timeline and access the public Twitter stream, you will be overwhelmed.  It is like a 1000 lane interstate that is funneled into a single lane.

To combat the information overload, Twitter users created hashtags, which are simply keywords that allow users to search all tweets in Twitter to find information.  For example, a search of #education will return any tweets with that hashtag.  An important note: A hashtag search will return tweets from users you follow and those you don't.

So, when you create a class hashtag, your students will have a way to search for all tweets about your class, and they will not need to follow you or you them in order to find the tweets.

But, why use Tweetdeck or Hootsuite?  Both of these apps take the Twitter stream and divide it into columns and refresh the columns in near real-time.  

A sample from Tweetdeck showing columns

The columns will collect all the tweets made by a single user or based on a search term.  So, you can create a search for a hashtag, and the app will create a column that updates in real-time with all tweets featuring that hashtag.

With Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, your students will be able to have all the tweets from the chat in a single column and constantly updated.  Also, both platforms allow the user to tweet without leaving the platform, so the students are never taken out of the chat.  Without using one of these apps, students (and you) will find it almost impossible to keep up with the number of tweets being posted.

To give it a try, participate in one of the ongoing education Twitter chats.  A very complete list can be found at Educators Technology and Mobile Learning

(Note: Tweetdeck only collects information from Twitter.  Hootsuite can be used to collect information from a range of social networks, not just Twitter.)