I went to a seminar at the TLTC the other day about using Twitter in the classroom. This is something that I've been trying to wrap my head around for a while now. I'm still not sure that I've figured out how to exploit its full potential, but I'm trying it on a small scale. Below is the text of an e-mail I sent to my students. I teach two sections of aural skills (#muth1103) and an Honors seminar titled Music and Crisis (#hons3304).
I had three followers from one class in the time it took me to walk from the classroom to my office. I'll try to update here as the semester unfolds.
If you’re interested in participating in class via Twitter, here are the “rules”:
1. Follow me at professor_berry
2. I will not follow you back. This way, you can tweet freely without worrying that Dr. Berry is looking over your e-shoulder. (BTW, I have a separate personal Twitter account, so you won’t be all up in my business either.)
3. If you want to discuss material relating to class, or retweet something that may be of interest to your classmates, please use the hashtag #muth1103 (that’s our course number). This way, others can search that tag and see everything related to our class.
4. There is no credit for participating; there is no penalty for not participating. I just think this might be a neat way for us to interact outside of our class meeting time.
5. Please use Twitter for more casual interactions. For business (i.e., scheduling appointments, grade inquiries, absence notices, etc.) please continue to use e-mail.
I had three followers from one class in the time it took me to walk from the classroom to my office. I'll try to update here as the semester unfolds.