Running head: TWITTER CHAT 1

Twitter Chat: Applying Social Media to the Classroom

Ilia Willison

Azusa Pacific University

EDUC546

Professor K. Hernandez
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Twitter Chat: Applying Social Media to the Classroom

Twitter chat is a simple way in order to communicate and meet educators across the

United States and around the world. The Twitter platform gives participants the ability to follow

other users, tweet, and to use hashtags in order to find a similar topic or interest. When we were

assigned the Twitter chat assignment, I chose to participate in the chat based off of the hashtag

#ccsschat. This chat focuses on the California content state standards typically used during the

lesson planning process and tells educators what information or skills students should have

gained by the end of the year. At first, not a lot of people were participating at the time in which

the chat was scheduled at 9:00pm on Sunday, March 31. About 15 minutes into the chat time,

more educators began using the hashtag to communicate and share ideas or opinions. Several

Twitter users shared their resources and discussed specific grade-level standards. I also

participated by retweeting the posts and responding to a tweet about how California state

standards are implemented in private schools.

Using Twitter in the classroom would be a great tool for students who are in middle or

high school, but I do not see it being used in an elementary school classroom. This is due to

students not having access to social media, nor should they when they are in elementary school

due to the inappropriate content on the internet. Students in middle or high school would need to

have parent permission to use Twitter and create a personal profile. If they would receive

permission, it could be used in the classroom as a forum-style communication in a Twitter chat.

Students could also create a Twitter profile as a historic character and tweet quotes, information,

or “throwbacks” to moments in that person’s life. Utilizing Twitter would engage the students,

but there would need to be rules and scaffolding implemented previous to assigning so that every

student feels confident in independently participating in Twitter and Twitter chats. Educators
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may also be able to use Twitter as a platform to connect with parents by sharing what the

students are doing within the classroom, special projects, field trip information, and more.