1. Find out what Twitter is. It is essential that you learn what Twitter is and how it works before integrating it into the EFL classroom. There are many different guides online that provide an overview of Twitter for beginners. One of the best is this YouTube video called Twitter in Plain English.

2. Set up a Twitter account for the classroom and encourage your students to set up their own individual accounts. Then, use a special app like Group Tweet or tweetparty to connect your accounts and enable private messaging.



3. Find and follow like-minded Twitter users. There are many different people on Twitter who post free EFL resources. Following these users will provide new challenges and learning opportunities for your students. Good examples include Englishfeed and ESL Time.

4. Start a story on your classroom account. Ask your students to continue the story with 140 character Tweets. This is a great way for EFL students to practice writing, spelling, grammar, and sentence structure.

5. Build English vocabulary by posting a new word each day. Ask students to respond to the word with posts of their own. They can post the definition to the word, synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms.

6. Share video lesson plans with your students. EFL teachers can share YouTube videos (and other videos) with students using TweeTube, a free Twitter application. TweeTube can also be used to share photos, website URLs, and other online resources.

7. Poll your students. You can get views from around the classroom by posting a survey, question, or poll to your classroom Twitter account. If you need help creating a poll you can use free apps like twtpoll or PollDaddy.

8. Ask trivia questions and encourage students to collaborate to find the answer. You can ask the question on your classroom account or use Twrivia, the official daily trivia quiz on Twitter.

9. Track Twitter trends from the classroom. Students can track and discuss trends on Twitter from the Twitter Search page and by using free web apps like Twist and TweetMeme.

10. Monitor the learning process. Twitter can double as a school log if you ask students to tweet about their assignments, the stuff they learn, and the trouble or successes they experience. This helps you, the teacher, better understand and evaluate each student's learning process.

Guest post from Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to Business School. Karen also writes for OnlineColleges.net.