Using Twitter as an Educational Technology

Twitter (https://twitter.com/ ) is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and read "tweets," or text messages, limited to 140 characters. Registered users can read and post tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through the website interface, Short Message Service (commonly known as “texting”), or mobile device apps. I chose this tool for its popularity. According to Twitter’s fact sheet, there are over 230 million monthly active users and 500 million tweets are sent per day (https://about.twitter.com/company). Therefore, the chances of are good that many of learners would already have a twitter account. I could set up a twitter account for a class, seminar, or training and ask questions throughout the course. In addition I can encourage learners to text in feedback, ideas, or comments, thus allowed me to adapt parts of the lessons on the basis of instant feedback.