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• Debate course topics, including assigned readings
• Share resources such as annotated bibliographies, websites, effective writing samples, conferences, calls for manuscripts
• Maintain a journal of work performed on group projects
• Require students to collaborate on documents, such as an essay written by the entire class

By using Twitter's direct message (private message) feature or the @reply function to publicly reply to another's tweet, explains Bergeson, "I am able to learn what my counterparts are working on, what is working, what is not working."

Inside the classroom, Twitter can be used to review lessons and remind students what is going to be covered in class that day or the next.  Teachers say tweeting a few quick review questions and some good Web sites add depth to their lessons. In turn, students can tweet their own questions and observations.

"Twitter is a great way to keep your students thinking after class," says Chris O'Neal, an instructional technology coordinator in Charlottesville, VA. "You can tweet a quick provocative question about a social studies lesson, for example, that will keep their brains active."

But what about the much-ballyhooed decline of the American attention span? Isn't Twitter just encouraging students to absorb nothing more than superficial, quick bytes of information? Maybe, but educators are finding ways to use Twitter for just the opposite, helping students crystallize thoughts, focus attention, and  make connections that weren't possible a few years ago.

Teachers like George Mayo in Maryland are enthusiastically employing Twitter to facilitate discussion and collaboration between students in their classrooms and their counterparts in different countries.

Mayo, an eighth-grade English teacher at Silver Spring International Middle School, used Twitter as a platform for a collaborative story written by his students. Using one Twitter account called Many Voices, Mayo invited his students, and students around the world, to add a sentence or two to an ongoing story through Tweets. Soon after, more than 100 students in six different countries had contributed.