Twitter in Education

One of my colleagues sent out an email last week asking for a vote in a "microgrant" competition in order to receive a flip camera for her class projects. Since I truly feel that this sort of media is the wave of the future for young learners, I was quick to go to the website and cast my vote.

I turned right around and mentioned that should she truly hope to win, she should send a tweet out to all of her followers. Having remembered the "tsunami" of tweets during the edublog voting period, I felt that this would be a great way to up her numbers.

Since she is not quite the "tweeter" that I am, I asked if I might send a shout-out to all of my followers through Twitter. Sure enough, she jumped from somewhere back in the list to 3rd place where she has held steady for the last few days. It may not be from my tweeting, but in all honesty, I simply think it might be, because the surge was directional proportional to my tweets.

I firmly believe that tweeting is beneficial in education for many reasons. One of the most exciting was that of this latest experience whereby through my tweets, a number of my followers were directed to the magnificent projects that are hoping to win a flip camera for their classroom. This is collaboration - like many instances - at its best.