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This is what I am talking about people!  I just read an article about a lady named Monica Rankin who teaches at the University of Texas Dallas and how she has integrated Twitter into her classroom.  What Rankin has done is encouraged conversation within her classroom through Twitter.  She uses the #hashtag method (which I talk about in an earlier post called Twubs) which helps her categorize the different topics such has comments, questions and feedback.  For a lot of students who participate in a classroom of over 100 people, it can be hard to get a question in or if you are a lot like me, you tend to be shy in front of larger crowds.  Through Rankin's willingness to embrace the Twitter realm, shy students can now have a voice and participate in classroom discussion.

Students in her classes have so far enjoyed her attempts to make learning more exciting.  They have enjoyed going back through the days Tweets to help them study for big test and to remember what was talked about during that lecture.  A lot of students have personal laptops that they take to the classroom and have opted to download different Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck and my personal favorite Seesmic Desktop to help them engage in the conversation.  Rankin then takes a projector and projects her Twitter agent on the wall so that everyone can follow along with what everyone is saying.

Although this new method does have some setbacks, the attempt to integrate social media into the classroom should be applauded.  Times are changing and we need to stay on the cutting edge side to help us be more effective. So for anyone of you who work in higher education environments, this might be a great idea to help get students interacting more on a regular basis.  Also this method could be used for conferences, giveaways, events, questions for speakers, the list goes on.  Check out this video below and see a little bit more in detail how Monica Rankin has made the leap into the twittershpere when it comes to higher education! (here is the link to the article if you would like to read in more detail)

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