Twitter+for+non-verbal+students

Non-Verbal Students and Twitter

Many special education classes have students that are non-verbal. These students often have difficulty expressing themselves with words or do not speak at all. Many of these students though are able to express themselves through technology with programs that help them communicate. In a class where questions may be posed so that a teacher can gauge student’s understanding students that are non-verbal can miss out. Twitter can help out these students. Teachers could pose questions to these students and have the students tweet their responses. This is a good way to get information from the students in real time and gauge all student’s understanding at once. This could also help students that do not have their language skills fully developed either. Many other activities can be use to take advantage of twitter to help students that are non-verbal. For instance while watching a movie or reading an article students can tweet out responses as they are experiencing them. Teachers would usually not get this feedback from non-verbal learners and this could really change the dynamic of the classroom. Having access to student’s thoughts that a teacher previously did not will really help them become a more effective teacher, and it can give a voice to students who may have struggled before.

Twitter may be hard for some nonverbal students to use though. If they are not familiar with expressing themselves through technology already they may not be ready to be tweeting on their own. Classroom aides can help the students learn how to express themselves and use twitter.

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