Journal 5: Twitter in the Classroom

Summary/Reflection:

I created a twitter account about a year ago when I attended the CUE Conference in Palm Springs. We were encouraged to tweet about the sessions we were attending with a quick highlight of what we were able to take back to our classroom and/or school site for others to be able to use. I started to follow some of the different speakers that I met at the conference that I really enjoyed learning from, in hope that they would tweet about new ideas and discoveries they have made. I don't tweet much on twitter myself unless I am at a conference or district event and find something interesting that I feel should be shared with my followers. However, just because I'm not tweeting 24/7 doesn't mean that I'm not checking my Twitter app on my phone periodically throughout the week to see if anyone I follow has tweeted about some great idea that I can bring into my classroom. Twitter for me is only being used as a professional development resource and not for personal use.

After looking at the resources posted for this class about twitter and now having done some extra research online, I think that it would be fun to create a classroom twitter account for students to take turns posting about what our classroom is learning. Since my students are under the age to be able to agree to the Terms and Conditions of the website, we could only create a classroom account where I would be the person to create the account. I would have to check each student's tweet before they would be allowed to post it onto our classroom account to make sure that it is appropriate for our classroom's use. The idea of having a classroom twitter account sounds like a fun learning experience for my classroom, but might also be time consuming on my end to read each student's tweet before they can submit it live. I'll definitely have to ponder about this idea and do some more research to see if it would be beneficial for my students.

Q1. How can Twitter be beneficial to teachers in the classroom setting?

A1. By having a classroom Twitter account where students will each have the opportunity to write classroom tweets (my students aren't old enough to have their own accounts), teachers can check for students' understanding of concepts being taught and books/stories that are being read in class. Students can write a tweet from a character's point of view, letting the teacher know the student's understanding of what was just read. Students can also tweet their favorite learning piece from the school day and if the teacher has shared the class' twitter information with parents, parents can see what their child learned at school that day.

Q2. How does Twitter help students to learn?

A2. Students can learn a lot on Twitter if teachers take the time to find reliable people and/or resources to follow. For example in fifth grade, students spend some time learning about the Solar System in science. NASA has a twitter account that teachers and students can follow to get access to real time information, pictures, and videos from NASA. There are also a lot of children's book authors with Twitter accounts that would love the opportunity to speak and/or write to your students on Twitter.