What To Do On Twitter: 50 Ideas For Teachers
by TeachThought Staff
This post has been updated and republished from a 2013 post.
- Send a link.
- Express an opinion.
- Follow innovative thought leaders.
- Stalk conversations between people you respect.
- Retweet a helpful link.
- Respond to someone else’s tweet.
- Have students use a tweet in a research project, then cite it using MLA rules.
- See what your peers are complaining about.
- Buy 5000 followers for $5, then wonder what on earth you’ve done.
- Get ideas for technology integration.
- Categorize twitter accounts by content using lists.
- Send a picture of your classroom with twitpic.
- Ask for pictures of other classrooms.
- Communicate with parents.
- Follow a twitter chat via #hashtag.
- Search for older messages (old = last week or so) to gauge “what educators are saying” about a particular topic–#21stedchat, for example. Or rather, what they were saying last week.
- Thank someone for their time, content, or collaboration.
- Organize a local-ish meet-up of local tweeps.
- Commit to never using the word tweeps again.
- Analyze emerging trends.
- Try to understand a complex idea by capturing it entirely in 140 characters. (Go on, try it.)
- See what your peers are curious about.
- Procrastinate when you should be researching, writing, grading, or planning. After all, twitter is research.
- Wonder what the world was like before twitter.
- Give an exam by asking open-ended questions which must be then revised, refined, and articulated in the very transparent domain of twitter.
- Encourage mentors or PLN members to observe and chime-in to said “open” exam with feedback.
- Curate resources by clicking relevant links, then saving with Evernote, pocket, Pearltrees, or another social bookmarking tool.
- Follow 10,000 people just to watch the absolutely ridiculous stream of tweets pour down your screen like a crazy digital waterfall.
- Ask an expert a question with @ messaging.
- Direct message someone a “hand-typed” (as opposed to automated) message as a show of support.
- Challenge an idea.
- Play devil’s advocate.
- Butt-in to a conversation that has nothing to do with you, and be abrasive about it. (Watch your follow count drop, and be sure grin devilishly when you get blocked.)
- Support a cause.
- Brainstorm with global educators to solve a local problem.
- Brainstorm with local educators to solve a global problem.
- Give exposure to under-exposed content.
- Listen to students.
- Start a new #hashtag.
- Revive “old” tweets worth revisiting.
- Start with a broad question, then collaboratively refine it until you’ve gotten at the right question. (This can be done with students or other educators.)
- Treat twitter like a personal text message service full single words and initialisms, e.g., “LOL!” and “IKR!” to one person.
- Or don’t.
- Promote your favorite learning platform by explaining how educators might use it.
- Research an idea.
- Lurk endlessly.
- Gather the general consensus on an issue.
- Read tweets from the perspective of new audiences—what would parents, politicians, students, business leaders, etc., think of tweeted edu-content.
- Watch what is “trending” when, and why.
- Pay attention to the differences in content that gets shared via RT, favorited, and responded to.
