Thank you for sharing your experiences.

“I was essentially asking them to use Twitter as a chat space. In future graduate seminars I am going to ask students to Tweet as if they are Twittering a conference presentation.”

Great advice here. I could definitely see Twitter working as a sort of collaborative note-taking experience during class discussions, student presentations, or in-class movies/film clips. Students can search the hashtag after class as a quick review of what we did that day…. especially useful for students who happen to be absent one day. Since I teach rhetoric, I was thinking of having each student tweet a mini-synopsis of the day’s assigned reading to kick-start class discussions. Our classrooms are equipped with a projector and screen, so I can display the twitter feed and compare what each student gathered from the reading. This would also serve to expose those who maybe did not read as carefully as others. I can also ask them to tweet their main claim or thesis on days when they turn in first drafts. If they struggle to give a snapshot of the paper in 140 characters, that might indicate a need to narrow the paper’s focus. Thesis statement tweets would also inform students of what their classmates are researching and perhaps strengthen a sense of community.

You’ve given me a bunch of ideas and tips that will help me shape my twitter assignment for the fall!