Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) is now being used by the ninth-grade students of a Central Florida School, who are being taught to share their thoughts on the social media and in public. A quick glance around the classroom will draw one’s attention to the smartphones in their hands that are being used for teaching them how to make postings on the social media sites. This is a major shift from notebooks used traditionally for educating.
Twitter used to promote healthy discussions
Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy wants smartphones to be used more by the teachers as a part of their lessons, says a report from Florida Today. Social media and many other technologies have been incorporated by the academy. On Twitter, a micro-blogging site, people can post their thoughts with the maximum limit of 140 characters.
The students post their thoughts in person or online via Twitter in this pre-Advanced Placement English class. A conversation takes place after this in which different students post their ’tweets’ to the post, which is displayed on the white board with the help of a projector.
The tweets on Twitter are made in many ways such as full sentences, abbreviated language, etc. This way the introvert students get an opportunity to open up and develop the skills of being able to address a crowd without feeling shy. For example, an incident took place during the class, when the Tweet of a student was liked by the moderator, who praised it and then requested the writer to read it aloud. While the person making the tweet was a bit hesitant at first, but eventually read it aloud.
Big effort from Holy Trinity
Individuals, who can manage themselves well online, are referred to as ‘digital citizens’ by Holy Trinity, who in recent years has been trying to encourage more of such. Day-to-day class work comprises of online projects and discussions, and highlighting them on the web is a big effort. The online Internet Portfolio of students made in a positive way adds immense value to their academic profiles, and if their name is searched on Google by any counselor, the search results will have the projects and literary discussions by those students.
“The kids are learning how to use social media appropriately,” said Susan Bearden, the school’s director of information technology. “They’re learning how what they post on Twitter and other social media sites can be viewed by literally the whole world.”
