What is Twitter and how can it be used for teaching?
Using your cellphone to send a message to Twitter- which also has an RSS feed
No matter what phone you have, you have the opportunity to keep your Twitter page up-to-date, and you can receive your friends’ updates as well. However, different phones are able to access Twitter essentials in different ways:
- Mobile phone- When signing up for a Twitter account, you can add your phone number for SMS/text messaging. If you choose to do so, you will receive friends’ tweets by text message, however, standard text messaging rates apply. To send a tweet though, you need to enter in your country’s code. For sending tweets within the U.S., address your text message to the number 40404.
- PDA(BlackBerry) – With a phone that has internet access, you can access your Twitter page by using Twitter mobile: m.twitter.com. You also have the opportunity to send and receive tweets through SMS/text messaging as well.
- iPhone- There is a Twitter application (TwitterFon) that you can find through theapps store. There are a few different options for Twittering on your iPhone, some are rated higher than others, so be wise before making your selection (I use TwitterFon).
- For Everyone & iPhones- By visiting the Twitterapps page, you can find all sorts of downloadables for Twittering on the go!
You can create a Feed from your blog:
http://twitterfeed.com/ This will automatically Twitter any post to your blog. I have created a twitterfeed from the BB blog. It is set to update every 12 hours so it won’t be automatic but you can set it to be hourly. This is yet another tool you can use to communicate with students.
Why use Twitter? Here are some ideas for using it for more than using the RSS feed
Some great tips in this article on why to use Twitter!
Here is a link to a blog article on the use of Twitter in the classroom:
http://mrslwalker.com/index.php/2009/03/29/nine-great-reasons-why-teachers-should-use-twitter/
