For those of you who don't know what Twitter is, it is a social networking site where members send out 140 character "tweets" to their followers. These messages can also contain links and pictures. Members have the ability to like tweets or retweet them to their followers. Twitter is becoming more and more as a business networking tool where professionals are using it to keep in touch with trends in their industry, and network with others in the same field.
Twitter has two features that make it the ideal social media platform for teachers. The first is that you can set up multiple accounts for one person. This gives you an opportunity to set up an account for each and every class. I myself have several accounts. I have one where I communicate with my friends, I have one where I follow the latest trends in education and I have others for each of the different classes I teach. This allows me to use a class Twitter to just communicate important information to students and parents such as homework and test reminders.
The other important feature Twitter has that benefits teachers, is that you don't have to have a Twitter account to receive tweets. That means that students, that do not have Twitter, can still get my tweets sent directly to their phones. To subscribe to receiving tweets on a cell phone all one has to do is send a text. For example to follow my account text "follow @MsMurraysStudents" to 40404. This sets them up to get all of the Tweets from @MsMurraysStudents.
It is a great advantage to be able to pick up my phone and type, "Remember you acceleration homework sheet is due tomorrow," and have it go to all of my students and their parents. By typing one little sentence into my phone I can distribute it to hundreds of people.
