In the realm of tech nerds, Twitter is king. It is also the most useful of the major social media platforms for use in education. For teachers, it is highly useful as a resource for connecting with other educators, as well as theatre professionals, theatre companies, and arts organizations.
Twitter is a microblog (click for full explanation). It is a blog in 144 characters or less. While there are plenty of users that post tweets akin to Facebook updates, there are also a vast number of users that post links to useful and interesting blogs and articles. If you can encourage students to follow you on Twitter, you can share interesting web finds that may enhance their educational experience.
What sets Twitter apart from Facebook is hashtags. Hashtags, like tags on a blog, link your tweets to others that also use the same hashtag. There are scores of well-known hashtags that are commonly used, such as #tweater (a hashtag for theatre education), but you have the ability to create any hashtag you’d like. Twitter users were actually at the forefront of creating backchanneling through the use of hashtags at tech conferences. And in a BYOD school environment, Twitter may be the best platform for backchanneling as almost every mobile device has a Twitter app.
