Tweet, Tweet: Twitter in the Classroom

Love it or hate it, technology needs to be playing a role in our classrooms.  Twitter is one of those sites you can use both professionally (check out yesterday's post) and in the classroom with your students.  I've found some great educational accounts to follow from my Twitter, @SenoraDanielle, and I am so excited to have joined this part of the social media world for personal and professional fun!

Now, that is great and all, but what has intrigued me most about Twitter is figuring out how to incorporate it into my teaching. I've seen a lot of suggestions, from Twitter being used as a classroom homepage to keep students and parents in the loop, to being used for specific activities. Honestly, after viewing all the suggestions, I have no doubt that students would be impressed by a teacher who incorporates this into their classroom (what do you mean, we aren't reading straight from our textbook today? We get to use computers? Did you say our homework is to use Twitter!? You're simply the best teacher I've ever had!!) Okay, maybe that point is a little exaggerated.  But I do have to say that incorporating Twitter into the classroom seems like it would be active teaching, fun for both the teacher AND the students.   50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom is full of suggestions which can be catered to any subject. I've gone ahead and brainstormed and played around with their suggestions and here are my key takeaways with a twist for Spanish Education:

• Create a classroom #Hashtag for all future Twitter assignments
• Make our own classroom Twitter Chat (or connect with other classes too) to discuss a certain topic.  Ways to elaborate? Every student can post original tweets, "like" their favorite tweet from a classmate during the assignment, or re-tweet/respond to classmates
• Use it as a news source for current events and culture for students to respond to (Hey--getting your ideas across in 140 characters is hard enough in English, so it's a great skill for my future students. Learn to be effective & concise!)
• Live tweet a book, movie, or song in the target language for an in-class activity
• Twitter Scavenger Hunt with pics and videos of using/seeing the TL in our everyday lives

So, I would love to know, have any of you used Twitter successfully in the classroom? Any positive/negative experiences?