My Digital Citizenship class inspired me to give Twitter a try in order to help my students develop a digital presence and gain experience using this medium for communicating. While I was initially hesitant about using social media, I realized that there were many benefits, which are outlined in a brainstorm completed by my students below:
Here is why we should use Twitter:
Overall, I loved using Twitter with my class and my students also recognized its value. I definitely plan to continue using social media to cultivate digital literacy with my students.
For more on how I use Twitter, see the video above. At Digital Learning Day on February 28th, 2019, Gena Estepa and I presented our techniques.
In Fall 2018, author of Catching up or Leading the Way, Yong Zhao, responded to a student's question and provided her another article for her research. You can also see some other snapshots of how students were using Twitter below: to share Adobe Spark videos and reflections on the reading.
Students shared their Adobe Spark presentations with their friends or families and also with their online communities on Twitter. This allowed them to spread their ideas far and wide.
Another compelling idea I learned from my Digital Citizenship class was to make instruction relevant by transcending the walls of the classroom. Inspired by my colleague, Alicia Caballero-Christenson, who asks her students to present content from the course to their friends and family (who says there is no human interaction in online classes?!), I went a step farther with this activity.
Students were organized into groups and together created Adobe Spark presentations about their topics. Their task was then to gather with friends and family and lead a discussion about topics, share even broader with their Twitter communities, and then report back to the class. The result? An amazing discussion! Not only were we able to hear perspectives from those in the class, but students also incorporated the ideas and questions posed by their respective communities. For more details about this activity, watch the video to the left or check out this blog post on the @ONE website.