Tag: twitter

Are you texting enough in school?

Dale 2 Comments

According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in the spring:

Young adults are the most avid texters by a wide margin. Cell owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day—that works out to more than 3,200 texts per month—and the typical or median cell owner in this age group sends or receives 50 messages per day (or 1500 messages per month).

Here’s how the rest of the nation breaks down.

Who Texts
Wow! According to this table, I’m over 65!

Read the whole report.

This reminds me of a Dilbert I saw recently.

I’m with Dilbert, but our students are not.

Here are two ways to use text messaging with students:

  1. post announcements to Twitter and have students follow via text message
  2. use Google Voice to have students text their questions to your email

Using Twitter with students has gotten easier

Dale 5 Comments

It’s been over two years since the last time I had my students send tweets during their field trip. The folks at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (one of our field trip stops) wrote a fun article about my students’ recent Twitter-filled visit.

Such may have been the disapproving sigh of an observer watching a busload of teenagers tour Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory last week. The 11th and 12th graders from Appleton, Wisconsin, spent an awful lot of time typing away on their cell phones. But be not dismayed, O horrified observer. They were just doing their homework. [read on…]

In two years, making this project work has gotten a lot easier. Here’s why:

  • a lot more students have cellphones with unlimited texting- and they all know how to text
  • many students have smart phones that allow easier tweeting via an app
  • students with iPod Touches just hopped on the public wifi they found available during the trip (we even had wifi on the bus!)
  • I didn’t have to explain Twitter to any of  the students- they all knew what it was and no one asked how to setup an account this time around
  • Twitter’s lists feature made grouping our field trip tweets super easy

This makes me think about what we’ll be able to do in two more years.

I do have two more things to add to my list of things that teachers should consider when using Twitter:

  • remind students that anyone will be able to read their tweets- they should never post about others unless they’re comfortable having that person read what they wrote
  • instruct the students to be discrete when they’re using their cellphone- ringers should be off and the activity of texting shouldn’t be any more disruptive than traditional note-taking

Lastly, check out the students’ tweets from this year’s trip.