Twitter In The Classroom

Within Media and Film Studies, the history and evolution of new technology and social media is core when it comes to our subject matter. Students study the impact these new platforms have had on society, elections, and a number of various industries, such as Hollywood and journalism.

Social media is also very prominent on the newly reformed BTEC in Creative Digital Media Production, with Unit 6 Media Campaigns being a brand new unit that did not exist in the old suite. It acknowledges a new sector in the advertising and publicity and marketing industry, and many students are now pursuing paid apprenticeships and careers in social media administration.

As a teacher who teaches these units, and a multimedia designer who controls my own school’s social media, Twitter is naturally an important aspect of my teaching style. I have been very lucky to network with some very qualified and experienced members of staff who I have never met. Some of the resources and techniques that I have discovered have improved my teaching. I have also been lucky enough to receive some complimentary feedback regarding my own ideas and practice, from staff who have taken inspiration from me. It is a rewarding, efficient and free form of CPD, with the potential to keep growing.

As a result, I wanted to record some of the ways Twitter is used in my classroom, in the hope that some staff may be able to share some of their own experiences...

#TwitterInTheClassroom


Try to ensure you use it often. An inactive account won’t hold anyone’s attention, and students will stop checking for new tweets. Embrace it and tweet frequently and consistently. Build it into your daily classroom routine, so it becomes the norm. That way it won't be a curveball when you come back to it four months later.

Encourage your students to set up their own professional, academic twitter accounts, separate to their personal accounts. Build in a lesson at the start of term, to allow them time, so they have no excuses. Encourage them to change their profile pic, add a bio and suggest they follow suitable accounts. This is perfect for the most able students who will soon take pride in their online, academic persona, and use it often.

Reward students for good practice. Build Twitter time into your starter exercises a few times a week. Have a phones out policy during certain tasks. Award #TweetofTheWeek consistently and issue points for first, second and third place. Have a league table of #TopTweeters. ‘At mention’ and ‘quote retweet’ students who have contributed useful articles, to encourage and promote competition.


Network with other teachers and departments. Add your favourite accounts to a Twitter list so you can browse only tweets by ‘media teachers’ or ‘maths network.’ You can even add your students to separate lists, so you can quickly browse tweets by class.

Never miss a tweet by turning on notifications for your most trusted accounts. Every time they tweet, you will be notified. Get the respect of accounts in your network, and others might switch them on for you!

Don’t be afraid to inject a bit of personality into your online activity. Keep it appropriate but teachers are humans with individuality, and their own styles. Students are more likely to engage with your narrative if they are being entertained as well!

Take advantage of a variety of media. Including an image makes your tweet three times larger in the timeline and less likely to be missed.  A hilarious animated gif with meme potential will autoplay and jump out, and may make you the coolest teacher on the inter-web! *Sarcasm, eyes rolling emoji...*



Take advantage of hashtags to archive tweets for later use. Unit or exam codes are perfect for this, and can be used to collate tweets on similar topics together. This can be perfect for subject specific resources or articles, such as #MEST3 or #MediaStudies or for teaching & learning such as #Assessment or #Literacy.



Use hashtags to start a debate. As a starter, have a question on the board, or tweet it. Ask students to respond using the hashtag and watch the responses come in. Get them to develop and build on each others, or even challenge them. They could retweet their favourites. Giving them a character limit will encourage succinct answers.

Take advantage of Twitter Moments. Use moments to cluster a montage of tweets together. This could be tweets that are linked thematically, share a common topic or address a certain issue. Or you could combine this with a hashtag debate and collate all the answers together as evidence for assessment or a scrutiny. Moments can be retweeted later in the year for revision.


Create digital flashcards with subject terms and definitions. Attaching them to tweets as images will allow students to save them to their phones for revision. Assessment Book feedback could reference particular tweets, that students must include in any rewrite.


Use twitter polls to settle quick debates. Or use it for #StudentVoice. Or use the poll feature as a form of assessment. Ask students to vote on the correct spelling of a troublesome subject term or common misconception.


Use twitter on the fly in the classroom. If a student is copying from the board, tweet a photo and allow them to save it to their phone or refer to it while writing. If a student completes a strong price of work, tweet it as an exemplar.


Be a lazy teacher. Stuck for an article for a starter, or a video text to screen for a discussion? Nominate a student to find one for the next lesson. Have a rota. Make it the norm. This will encourage discovery as common and good practice and many students who embrace their twitter accounts will start sending you stuff without asking.



Use it for differentiation. Tweet different articles to different students. From different sources on different topics. With different reading abilities and of varying length. In different languages. With sections missing or redacted. Ask a student to find an article for another student.


I am sure there are many more uses. I am very interested to hear them, either in the comments, or send me a tweet!

Thanks for reading.

Gary Rose