Twitter In The Class / To Extend the Class...

I just ran across Chad the Teacher's Blog about Tweeting to your students OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL... 

http://chadtheteacher.com/blog/how-about-a-tweetudy/
His thought is to help them study, but what are your thoughts?  Are there other ways to use Twitter in your classroom?  Could you tweet with your students during a class period?

Some Ideas:

1)  Have a computer or a few iPod Touches set up to Twitter to Tweet during class about interesting topics, ideas etc. that learn.  This would help not only students who are absent that day, but also possibly students throughout the school and beyond.

2)  Tweet ideas that you don't want the students to forget, tweet the homework assignment, they could then go and look it up later if they forgot or needed some review.  This would also help parents, grandparents etc. that need to keep up with what is going on in the classroom.

3)  Easy notifications on changes to class content, schedules, venues or other important information.  Let the students be informed.  When you find out something that is upcoming in your schedule, let the students know about it.  Will there be a change because you have a visitor coming to class or maybe there is an upcoming play/band concert etc.  Let the students know so that they can ask their parents about it.  Remind them that there is a bake sale going on and to bring their money.

4)  "Sum"ming Up...Maybe there is someone that really understood the assignment and can rewrite it in 140 characters to help the other students.  Have them sum it up. (yes, this was supposed to be a silly play on a Math Term).

5)  Sharing information that students have found with other people.  If the students are able to get online, either at home or during school, let them share their finds.  Sometimes they find really neat stuff that you would have never taken the time to find.

6)  Is there some mathematician that you could follow?  Maybe you are learning something in math about a specific topic.  Find a person in that field you could follow.  Math is in the real world...this would be one way to help let the students recognize it.

7)  Collecting Data for Geometic Analysis is a great example from:  http://www.teachscienceandmath.com/2009/04/16/using-twitter-in-science-and-math-class/
•Students collect information from students located in other schools regarding the dimensions of their classroom, desks, number of students, and other objects in the room which take up floor space.
•Then students develop geometric representations of these classrooms, to determine which classroom has the greatest and least amount of square footage per student.
•Students then share their results with all participants.

I'm going to have to come back later and post some more ideas.  The juices are just starting to flow...