Overview
[D]Twitter is a free-to-use micro-blogging application that enables you to share your comments with the world in 140 characters. When you post a comment on Twitter, you 'tweet'. Through tweeting you can share comments, links, photos, videos, drive traffic (visitors) to your website or blog, find out the latest news, find people around the world to network with, and have a conversation.
Despite the millions of users, Twitter is still a relatively new phenomenon in the context of mainstream learning and teaching. Teachers/lecturers at all levels of education around the world are experimenting with Twitter to support learning and teaching and there are already lots of documented examples and ideas for teaching with Twitter, but there is still little in the way of formal research. Some examples of use in teaching include: synchronous and asynchronous discussion activities, role-playing, foreign language practice and sharing links related to a topic of research.
The fact that Twitter can be accessed and interacted with from a variety of platforms and mobile devices means that it is more readily available and accessible than some applications that are perhaps not so mobile friendly - the end user chooses how they interact with Twitter. However, due to the popularity of Twitter, there are moments when the service is overloaded and therefore temporarily unavailable and there is no guarantee that historic tweets will be retained (this is a free service after all, and there are literally millions of Twitter accounts), although tweets can be archived outside of Twitter, through the use of other applications, or even by cutting and pasting. Here is an example of an archived Twitter conversation: #lrnchat
Twitter can also be used to connect learners, educators and those outside of education, wherever they are in the world, which can be a great way to engage students with well-known individuals or organisations relevant to their discipline. There is of course a lot of trivial use of Twitter, but users do not have to engage with that. Twitter accounts can be set to private, so for example, accounts could be created so that only a lecturer and his/her students can see each other's tweets, if that was deemed appropriate.
There is a lot of excitement surrounding the potential of Twitter in learning and teaching and it is also an excellent tool for networking with peers around the world, who share the same interests.
You can find out more about using Twitter in learning and teaching in the next section.
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