Twitter...Can I use it as a Teaching Tool?

So I have had my Twitter account for about 5 or 6 years now, had to start it up for one of my Post Baccalaureate classes by Dr. Grace Lin at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. I never really understood the need for having Twitter, it seemed to me that it is very "in the NOW", as in instant gratification. I did started following several news agencies, chefs and celebrities, just for keeping up with the news, for fun or hobby. In addition, it seemed to me that "every day folks" didn't really use Twitter that much.

Fast forward to today. I have now tweeted just over 500 times, mainly because I linked my Facebook account, and if I post something on Facebook, it automatically get tweeted too. I also have come across the use of Twitter in an educational setting. Several of my Graduate classes have had a Twitter activity or requirement. I believe the focus of these activities is becoming more adept at using Twitter as a tool, and more specifically as a teaching tool. 

I have looked up close at the article by Peter Tiernan: "A study of the use of Twitter by students for lecture engagement and discussion" (2013). Twitter could very well be used as some sort of "formative assessment" tool, a tool to have students engage with other students with regards to any possible aspect of a class' lectures, assignments or other activities. Also Twitter shows potential as an Audience Response System (ARS); look at it as Kahoot! for college, but maybe not as fun. 

In my current classes we use Twitter, Periscope, Line, etc. as direct stream social media source. While we use fairly "closed system"- as in private groups or lists- some of the material or the posts are visible by the general public (the world). That is something that I would like to see changed, or finds ways to prevent this, as I teach 8th-graders, and I need to keep them protected. Tiernan also mentions in his paper that Twitter involvement varies depending on what part of a learning unit the students are on: high in the beginning, dropping once "the NEW wears off", and then back up when new topics/projects/etc are introduced. I experienced the same thing after we were introduced to Periscope or Line. 

In a K-12 setting, my students would have similar problems as some students mentioned in Tiernan's paper: no access to Twitter due to DOE servers blocking Twitter and most other Social Media sites on the student WIFI server. This makes it an unfair tool as only some of my students have access to smartphones with their own data service. While Twitter does show strong potential as a teaching and collaboration tool, at this point, with restrictions form "higher up echelon" would not be a very effective tool in a Hawaii Public School k-12 setting, unless the teacher finds a way to bypass the restrictions on the student server.

I think, for me personally, considering my students and their attention span, I would like to stick to more of a gamification approach, such as Kahoot! for assessment or feedback purposes, and apps like Remind or Chirp to send them updates or links to resources, assignments,etc.

But none the less, keep on Tweeting...we can only get better!

References:
Kahoot! Making Learning Awesome. Retrieves October 21, 2015, from https://getkahoot.com/

Tiernan, P. (2013). A study of the use of Twitter by students for lecture engagement and discussion. Retrieved October 21, 2015, from http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10639-012-9246-4.pdf