Tweeting with Teens

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Last week we held an assembly for all of the high school students about digital citizenship. I was very concerned about the presentation being too formal and stodgy so I wanted to find a way to make it more interactive. I began to consider the use of cell phones as a means for the students to communicate with the presentation, each other, and with me, the presenter. Because the presentation was very short and packed with a lot of content, I needed to provide the students with a method of asking questions and offering comments during the presentation. Two possibilities emerged: texting and tweeting. One morning in homeroom several weeks before the presentation I took an informal show-of-hands poll to determine if the students had Twitter accounts, and if they were actively tweeting via their cell phones. Enough of the students appeared to meet these requirements so I decided on tweeting.

I set up a hashtag (#PCSCyberliving) and used Twitterfall to aggregate and display the tweets during the presentation. I had a regular backchannel going! Technically, all worked well. I had a prepared Keynote presentation for the content and I periodically switched between the presentation and Twitterfall to field questions, highlight comments, and to publicly acknowledge the backchannel. I had a teacher serve as the "monitor" of the Twitter feed, so as I focused on presenting the material, she focused on making sure the Twitter feed was under control. She also posted links and resources that went along with the presentation. In the future, I would really like to have someone serve as a commentator in addition to moderator. That way anyone not attending the presentation but following the feed can also follow along with the crux of the presentation. All of the technology elements worked well and I found no issues using Twitter to make my presentation more interactive.

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Socially, well that's another story! As expected the Twitter resolution was used for both good and mischief! (I was dealing with high school students after all!) Most students offered thoughtful and appropriate comments and questions, but there were at least two students that insisted on using the feed as an opportunity to play class clown. This is why the moderator was so important, as well as my announcement at the beginning of the presentation that I would be displaying the feed periodically to the audience. I hoped that these two factors would deter students from indulging in bad behavior. Overall it worked. The moderator had to send one or two direct messages to students that got out of hand and her intervention seemed to quell the behavior. I think that given the subject of the presentation - digital citizenship - the Twitter resolution was a perfect lesson by doing. There was even a student out sick that day who participated in the Twitter feed.


If you think about employing this technique I strongly recommend you do - whether it be for a big presentation or in a classroom. It is an excellent way to encourage and enable students to use technology in a more academic way, if they are not already. It also provides teachers an opportunity to see how this technique can be used in a classroom setting. And it gives students an opportunity to practice good behavior using technology while under the guidance of adults. I'd say it's a win-win-win solution!


Feel free to email me or comment below with questions or share your own experience!


Thanks for reading!


Tech Tools Referenced:
Twitterfall http://twitterfall.com/
Twitter http://twitter.com
Keynote http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/