EduTweet

Would you like to have a classroom set of those expensive 'clickers' but have no budget for them or find them too complex to set up and use? Would you like to integrate cell phones, Twitter, and the internet into your classroom routine? Then this is the app for you! This web page app leverages Twitter and its mobile phone capabilities to give you instant feedback from student input in very much the same way that a classroom set of 'clickers' would, except that this is FREE! Why force students to use/buy/learn a whole new electronic device when the very same thing can be accomplished using a piece of technology that our students already carry around and know how to use very well: their cell phone. Here is how it works: 1. Have your students sign up for Twitter and connect their Twitter account to their cell phone. 2. During class, ask a question and have your students send a text message to Twitter (40404 in the US) with their response along with a unique search term (ex: theanswer #smithenglish101). 3. Use EduTweet to search for your search term (ex: #smithenglish101) and find all your students' responses, with analytics! 4. Use EduTweet repeatedly by slightly varying the search term (ex: #smithenglishq1 for the first question; #smithenglishq2 for the second question, etc). 5. Print each search result directly OR save as a PDF. 6. Ability to vary the type of graph, the number of search results, and what is printed/saved. EduTweet works well and looks best in Google Chrome It has been tested (and found working) in IE7, Firefox3.5, and Chrome.v4. If you are using a different browser and it does not work, please let me know. I would appreciate any feedback on this service. What other features would you like to see? Is there any feature currently available that isn't working as well as it should or could? For now, this service is free and without ads. However, because of this, this app is on an inexpensive shared-hosting server which cannot handle much traffic. If this app starts getting good traffic (fingers crossed), I would gladly consider upgrading to a better server. In the (fortunate) event that I need to upgrade servers to accommodate traffic, money can be raised to cover the cost either through ads or donations. If at all possible, I'd like to keep ads off the page, so donations would be greatly appreciated, both to improve EduTweet and as a token of appreciation! Thank you for using EduTweet!