Tools/Twitter

140 characters to get your point across. Using Twitter to think about communication & current affairs (101 characters)

Tool Description Twitter is a microblogging site from which you can broadcast messages of 140 characters each. ^(edit)Twitter is a microblogging site from which you can broadcast messages of 140 characters each.

Teaching Approach. Twitter encourages pupils to think about language^(ta) in the context of microblogging^(tool) and online communication^(tool). It also offers opportunities for teachers to display sets of current tweets on particular issues, create 'word clouds' from these, etc. ^(edit)(appears above table)

Tool details
Title
Topic
Licence / Cost / Platform	Webtool
Subject / Categories
Teaching Ideas / Links	Twitter can be a useful tool for encouraging students to think about writing in concise, and accessible ways. Students may also find it useful to follow updates on particular issues, research, or current affairs. It may also be possible (and fun!) to use twitter to get in touch with the global user base. Other tools can be used to access twitter, and display tweets to the class (e.g. http://visibletweets.com/, http://twitterfall.com/, If you're interested in more ideas, you could check out the guide here http://langwitches.org/blog/2011/08/27/guide-to-twitter-in-the-k-8-classroom/
Link	www.twitter.com