Microblogging in Education

After using Twitter for over a short time I have already thought of some ways that I could incorporate this new (to me) form of technology within my own classroom. One main way I could see myself using microblogging is to have students write the first thing that comes to mind when they arrive to the classroom in the morning. My hope would be to find out current information of what's going on in the lives of my students or their feelings as we start a new school day.
As a future bilingual teacher I enjoyed reading about the 12-second video clip alternatives to text-based microblogging for ESL students. I liked the ideas the author gave to use video clips in so many different ways. My favorite idea was the "12 Second Learning Diary" where students would record what they learned in class that day. I liked the idea of using spoken language with the ESL students since it gives them time to talk and use the English language without having to talk for a long time. Within my own classroom I could imagine having a little area with curtains surrounding it with a webcam. This area would serve as a "recording studio" and would be more private for the students, hopefully creating a more relaxed atmosphere.

Another article I found was called "Transitioning to Web 2.0". This article is one of the major reason I would love to have a classroom set of computers. I would LOVE for my students to be able to use all of these avenues of technology regularly. The author of this article uses Twitter and podcasting within her own classroom for a variety of purposes. One idea that I really liked was using Twitter to communicate with her classmates by creating similar usernames for each student to make it easier to follow each other. This was one topic I was wondering about when trying to figure out how to use Twitter within my own classroom. Although the author doesn't mention it directly in this blog RSS feed would be another great tool to keep track of the students' posts.