Twitter Me This

Anne Smith recently blogged about a student who was having trouble completing an assignment. She had asked her students to pick a profession they were interested in and interview 2-3 people about it, post their interviews and other information on their wiki, then write a summary response paper about what they learned. But one student wasn�t having any luck connecting with professionals in her area of interest, so Anne tweeted out a request on Twitter.

Once I found out that my student wanted to move into the FBI or secret service, I went to my computer and got on Twitter putting out a tweet looking for connections to these professions. From my tweet, two other friends (cgfaulkner and karlfisch) retweeted my request putting this student�s interest out into a much wider audience. Before I knew it, tweets were coming in from all over, emails were being fed to her and I by all sorts of people willing to help her in her quest for knowledge. I can�t tell you what that meant to me other than to say, it is good to know that all of you are out there. Thanks for showing me and my students the power of the web. Rather than walking away from a learning struggle, I hope she learns that the web can make learning possible- the web connects us.

So, how are you using your Personal Learning Network and real-time conversation/connection tools like Twitter to help your students? And how are you helping your students use the tools � and the network - to help themselves?