Here are two reasons to introduce Twitter into your classroom: 1) to study twitter itself as part of a media literacy unit, and 2) to use twitter as a collaborative tool:

1. Examining Twitter in the classroom to see how social media tools are changing the way the world communicates.

Social networking (web 2.0) is changing the way the world communicates. Consider the following real-life examples involving Twitter to stimulate media literacy discussions:

To begin with, CNN reported a story on Steve Tucker, a wheat farmer from Nebraska who has more people following him on Twitter in his online community than people who live in his physical community. (They interviewed him using Video Skype.) He tweets using his cell phone from the middle of nowhere.

Secondly, Twitter and social networks are changing the way news gets reported. For example, people in Tehran were able to use their cell phones to tweet what was happening during the Iran election and subsequent demonstrations.

Next, politicians are using social networks to communicate with and mobilize their voters. At the time of writing, 15,797 people were following Prime Minister Harper's Twitter account (twitter.com/pmHarper) and 1,654,168 people were following President Obama (twitter.com/BARACKOBAMA)

You might also want to consider that, identity theft can happen on social networking pages. Well known celebrities and personalities are being impersonated and slandered by people who create false accounts in their name. For example, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter in June 2009 when someone impersonated the Cardinals manager. Twitter now offers verified accounts for high-profile twitter accounts, including Ashton Kutcher (twitter.com/aplusk), Ellen DeGeneres (twitter.com/TheEllenShow) and Britney Spears (twitter.com/britneyspears). According to Twitterholic, Kutcher, DeGeneres and Spears have more followers on Twitter than CNN (twitter.com/cnnbrk)

2. Using Twitter in the Classroom as a collaboration tool

Similar to blogs, wikis, and google docs, twitter is another digital medium that helps people (including students) collaborate and communicate. Here are some paper-and-pencil examples of teaching strategies in the classroom:

1. Think, pair, share is a common teaching strategy that provide students with an opportunity to independently try a problem as well as get feedback from their immediate peers and entire class.

2. Having students write responses on post-it notes can be a great paper-and-pencil tool to help students become more precise in their answers. Writing on a post-it note can be less intimidating than a larger piece of paper.

3. Posting examples of student work on the wall allows students to see what excellence looks like

4. Timely feedback allows students to self-correct and guides their learning.

Twitter is a neat "little" collaboration tool that allows you to do the same teaching strategies online. You could create individual or group Twitter accounts for your students. A class account follows all of the students so we get a live feed of ideas which you can then project using a data projector.

1. It's kind of like using classroom clickers (i.e. SMART student response system), but instead of being limited to multiple-choice answers or numerical responses, you're texting in short messages. In the computer lab, you could ask a question in response to a text (printed or media) and have students respond on Twitter.

2. Think, Pair, Share using Twitter: Think - composing a response on twitter and submitting it. Pair - Seeing what other people are tweeting and revising your tweet based on their feedback. Share - have students turn off their monitors and have a whole-class conversation about the question.

3. Students can post responses to a question on Twitter which can be read by their peers allowing for immediate feedback. Responses are limited to 144 characters which is the digital equivalent of a post-it note.

Integrating technology into the curriculum helps prepare students for the real world, validates this genre of literacy, and can motivate / interest students in a way that traditional paper-and-pencil tasks do not.