Twittories: collaborative writing with Twitter?

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Permalink Reply by kolson on January 2, 2008 at 1:30pm

Just checked it out, thanks for sharing. I'm getting more and more drawn into Twitter every day, although I have to make sure I'm using it more for collaboration/resource sharing than just for social use, since I can't use it with students. Can't really justify the time spent if I'm just notifying everyone when I'm going to bed or eating supper!

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Permalink Reply by Frank, Divergent Learner on January 3, 2008 at 12:23pm

your welcome .... You can even use Twitter for brainstorming and reporting. For example, at 5pm you send a tweet to your students about a topic that needs some creative ideas ... the students then start tweeting their thoughts, one thought springboards into other thoughts, on and on. The next day, the teacher opens up the twitter page and there is a chronological listing of the student's brainstorm session. Now the class is ready for the next project step, i.e. grouping, organizing, naming .. etc .. setting teams for further project activities, etc. For me, as a teacher of English as a foreign language, any out-of-class exposure and use of the language is critical to the success of acquiring the language. It simply can't happen only in the classroom. Twitter is one more too to extend the classroom to the outside.

The ManyVoices project that Dereck mentions below is also a part of my linked info above. Thanks for the direct links, Derek.

What about becoming investigative reporters. Turn you students loose in the city in teams and let them hunt down safety issues, look for hidden art treasures, etc .... fun and authentic and purposeful ... exactly what a task should be. Again, open the Web page later and all the "investigative reports" are their to move to the next project phase.

Enjoy!
META Web 2.0

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Permalink Reply by Derek Baird on January 2, 2008 at 5:10pm

The ManyVoices project, started by Washington D.C. Middle School teacher Mr. Mayo (http://mrmayo.org), is a collaborative story being written by 140 different middle school students across the globe using Twitter.

This is an excellent and creative example of how educators can use technology, like Twitter, to motivate today's "totally wired" student to be actively engaged in the creative writing process.

You can learn more about the ManyVoices Project, along with relevant links and information how to participate, by clicking here: http://teachers.yahoo.com/document/58153

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stange on December 7, 2009 at 1:59pm

http://snowcore.uwaterloo.ca/snowtweets/snowbird/

What is the Snowtweets project?

The Snowtweets Project provides a way for people interested in snow measurements to quickly broadcast their own snow depth measurements to the web. These data are then picked up by our database and mapped in near real time. We are especially interested in using web-based digital technologies to map snow data; currently, the project uses the micro-blogging site Twitter as its data broadcasting scheme.

To view the snow depth measurements (or Tweets), we have developed a data visualization tool called Snowbird that lets you explore the reported snow depths around the globe. The viewer shows where the reports are located and how much snow there is at each reported site.

The Snowtweets Project is in early stages of development and we plan to update and improve it as we go along. We rely on user participation to measure snow depth (including zero snow depth) and then send the measurements in.

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