HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY TWITTER !!

Twitter just completed 6 years yesterday and what an incredible real time information platform it has become.  350 Million tweets are sent every day on Twitter. With its reach of 200 Million users most of whom are young and most probably students, I wanted to see if I could use Twitter as an educational platform.

A simple search on Twitter for “Maths Help” resulted in nearly a dozen desperate pleas for help with Maths that had been posted in the last 10 minutes:

My maths teacher is gonna shoot me tomorrow, anyone good at higher maths? Help ah :(

someone help me with my maths homework please ;A;

someone help me with Maths, I can do it just cba.

So I came up with the following plan to experiment with online tutoring on Twitter:

1. I Created a new Twitter account called @wktutor so that I did not spam the Timelines of my existing @wisekangaroo followers. 
2. I launched a new initiative from Wisekangaroo called #AskWisekangaroo.
3. I replied to a few of the “Maths Help” tweets saying “Send me your questions with a hashtag AskWisekangaroo and I will help you.” and just waited to see what happened next.

In a matter of minutes I started getting several requests for help with #AskWisekangaroo. The message itself was retweeted by several students to all their friends.  I tried to answer as many questions as I could and was actually a bit embarrassed that I had forgotten most of the trigonometry and calculus that I had studied in school.

The entire experiment was a great eye opener for me.

1. I realized that students these days are looking to engage with educators on platforms that they are comfortable with.
2. Students look for live tutoring help rather than searching on Google or other forums that may have answers to their questions.
3. Educators have not yet realized the potential of Twitter as a real time educational platform. 

In the coming weeks I will continue to experiment with Twitter as an Educational platform along with using online live video tutoring through Wisekangaroo. I would love to hear if other educators have done anything similar.

Atul Pandey

(Founder Wisekangaroo)