Microblog uses in the classroom!

After reading a couple of articles on microblogs, I have realized how many great ways they can be used in the classroom for education. This one article that I read, "Can we use Twitter for Educational Activities?" (Grosseck, Holotescu, 2008) had some really great insights. The article can be located at this link for your own reading http://www.scribd.com/doc/2286799/Can-we-use-Twitter-for-educational-activities. "People use twitter to communicate, to ask questions, to ask for directions, support, advice, and to validate open-ended interpretations or ideas by discussing with the others. Twitter has mashed up personal publishing and communication, the result being a new type of real-time publishing" (Grosseck, Holotescu, 2008).
Microblogging has the potential to create a positive impact on education due to so many ways of its uses. It can change classroom dynamics, it is easy to get information, keeps people connected that might never otherwise have met, it keeps track of conversations students carry on of a topic, requires summarizing, teachers can be available, it connects students to the real world and quiet students can finally be heard! Some of the more specific ways microblogging can be used in the classroom based on the article is that it promotes writing as a fun activity, fosters editing skills and the development of literacy skills. Questions and responses can be set to a group in the classsroom, it develops online discourses. Students can have an audience to their thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc. They can send notes, manage meet-ups for studying and group work. Collaboration across the school or even the country has just been made easier with microblogging as well! It seems the possibilities are endless.