5 Reasons Teachers and Students Should Twitter

1) Collaboration
Today's education places a strong emphasis on group work, and rightly so. Students develop invaluable critical skills by listening to a variety of ideas and perspectives while developing their own thoughts. Twitter is a means of continually sharing ideas from a myriad of perspectives.
2) Experts
Teachers and students alike can instantaneously connect with an expert in any field. It took me only a few minutes to find and share ideas with a number of experts in the field of education and technology. The ease of connecting with experts is remarkable.
3) Reflections
My students are beginning to moan when I say the word "reflection." But, reflecting is a necessary component of learning. Twittering is a means in which students can reflect upon school activities and what they've learned. If students are asked to twitter about school activities, they'll be participating in self-reflection (without the moaning).
4) Feedback and Idea Development
Twitter is an excellent forum for getting instant feedback on ideas. I teach at a school where the same students are together for years. Sharing and developing ideas through twitter helps my students gain new perspectives and fresh constructive criticism.
5) Resources
Most twitterers, especially the better mindcasters, are continuously posting weblinks. The internet is a big place and some great resources can get buried in google. Twitter helps users connect with a variety of new, thought-provoking, and useful resources. Teachers can continually be learning about new developments and resources in their field.

You can set up an account at Twitter

Twitter: The Good, the bad, and the Ashton Kutcher

I first heard of twitter a year ago and was baffled by its usefulness. However, the website's popularity has caused me to reexamine and revisit the site. If you are new to the site, twitter is a site in which users frequently broadcast brief updates, usually of one or two sentences long. When I first visited twitter, I saw little value in the social network, but as an educator it's my responsibility to understand and utilize new media.

Many micro-bloggers use twitter as a means of broadcasting meaningless events from their life. This form of status updates, popular on facebook and msn, are refered to as lifecasting. Ashton Kutcher, a frequent and popular twitterer, is a quitessential lifecaster. Despite logic, Ashton is on his way to becoming the most popular person on twitter. He's become so popular that he has recently challenged the national newsnetwork CNN to a twitter popularity contest. CNN represents another form of twittering known as infocasting, where small amounts of information are posted. Despite their usefulness, infocasts can often become hollow or superficial. However, a valuable infocast to follow is education where useful news about education trends and developments are posted.

The brighter side of twitter is called mindcasting. Twitterers that are mindcasting will never share their meal choices or bad date experiences; instead, mindcasters share thoughtful ideas and useful resources. Anyone can tap into the thoughts of some of the world's most innovative minds, which is a great resource for any professional, especially educators.

Top five mindcasts to follow for media literacy teachers

1) Jay Rosen: "I teach journalism at NYU, write the blog PressThink, direct NewAssignment.Net, and try to grok new media. I don't do lifecasting but mindcasting on Twitter." Website Twitter
2) David Parry: "I think about things, and talk about things with students, and get paid for it. (Emerging Media Prof. at UT Dallas.)" Website Twitter
3) Scott McLeod: "An Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Educational Administration program at Iowa State University and director of CASTLE." Website Twitter
4) Alec Couros: "Professor of educational technology & media at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina." Website Twitter
5) Scott Meech: "Technology in Education isn't the Future, It is the Present!" He is an expert in education and technology. Website Twitter

Oh and don't forget about me, =) jordankent

For more information, here's a link to a Twitter handbook for teachers