Last year I participated in a really cool event called “Walk My World.” Educators and students shared bits of their lives via Twitter using the hashtag #walkmyworld. The project covered ten weeks, with specific learning events each week. We analyzed the poetry of Robert Hass, wrote poetry, and shared pictures. Of shoes. Lots of shoes. Not exactly sure why.

It was tremendous fun, and I connected with people all over the US. It was during this project that I decided to see just how well Twitter can function as a pedagogical tool. So much class time is taken up with administrative duties and test preparation that there often isn’t time to really delve into the meat of the literature and what makes it relevant to today’s teens/young adults. Using Twitter as a modified discussion board allows students to continue to contemplate the literature: how it affects them and how others are affected by it. Assigning a class hashtag and an “assignment” tag allows Twitter’s filters to organize those discussions so that a teacher can quickly see how students are thinking about the work.

Twitter has its advantages. The 140 character limit forces economy of words. The relative anonymity allows for shy students to speak up and be heard. Reading the tweets of their peers connects students who may not otherwise have something in common. Having to connect literature to life requires introspection and self-evaluation, two key elements in forming a personal identity. To get students considering who they are and who they want to be is a critical thinking skill that cannot be measured in a standardized test. This kind of thinking is real life.

In a broader sense, a project like Walk My World allows people to connect who may never have met in any other way. The commonality of learning events forms a foundation upon which relationships can build. One never knows where those relationships will lead.