Twitter As A Science Teaching Tool

Twitter is usually thought of as primarily a social media tool. However, there are many innovate ways to utilize Twitter in non-social domains.

An article today in ScienceDaily outlined a manuscript soon to be published that examines Twitter as a science education tool for middle school students.

Ryan Becker, a doctoral student at the University of Vermont found middle school students found Twitter "enabled them to follow real science in real time as it develops around the world". 

Students found following and interacting with science Twitter feeds from NASA, PBS Nova and NPR's Science Friday helpful in expanding interest and knowledge of science.

Twitter's polling feature can also be incorporated into classroom instruction allowing instant test question surveys that can lead to classroom discussion.

One method to make it easy for a group of students would be to develop and maintain specific Twitter lists for specific subjects, i.e. biology by grade level.

The entire ScienceDaily article can be found here

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Picture is a Twitter screen shot demonstrating NASA interacting with students.