Last semester I created a class session using Twitter.  It was a my first experiment with using a social networking tool in the classroom. Since it is difficult for students to keep their hands off the PCs while I am lecturing, I thought it might be interesting to intertwine this new tool into my lecture in order to get more participation from the class.  This has been done by others with mixed results.  Here are some examples/sites of further experimentation:

• The Twitter Experiment: UT Dallas (video)
• 100 Ways to Teach with Twitter (blog)

So, the first step was requiring the students to get a Twitter account. Once they accomplished that, they then joined the Twibe I had set up for the class. This was where we were going to post all our tweets during class. I also could have created a hashtag, for the class  rather than a Twibe,  but that would have entailed explaining how hashtags work, posting examples, and, what I felt was a lot more instruction on how the technology worked than I was prepared to give.

Once physically in class, I had everyone sign in to the Twibe dedicated to our class.  With the instructor’s PC screen projected on an overhead, I toggled between 3 screens:  a Powerpoint with each slide posing a question on either copyright, fair use or  plagiarism issues; the twibe screen; and a poll program called Twtpoll showing how everyone voted on each of the slides. I had a set of about six questions and I got the idea of using Twitter from an article I read on clickers in the classroom. Since we did not have clickers nor were we going to get any in the near future, I thought the next best thing would be to use Twitter.

My class didn’t really embrace Twitter as I expected they would only because I think they were much more used to texting on their mobiles rather than tweeting.  I’m now brainstorming new ways to use it and have found lots of great ideas on the web.  Stay tuned on how “take 2″ turns out!