What are some ways elementary teachers might use Twitter in their classrooms?
For grades K-5: I'm thinking that teachers would encourage parents to sign up and receive updates on their cellphones. Then the teacher would send updates regarding events in class for example; "Pep Rally tomorrow, wear school t-shirt" or "Remember materials for science project tomorrow." (Lee Kolbert)
I like the above idea for using Twitter as somewhat of an announcement board. This could possibly be done school wide. Reminder of functions coming up and possibly on the lookout for notes that are sent home with students. If that was the case. Would the classroom or school want to follow anyone then? If the decision is to follow a parent, there is no way to control what a parent might post on their own Twitter accounts. (Damon Boyer)
I had the idea of recording aha moments and great questions in my 5th grade class. We had a twitter feed set up on our class website and I thought that it would be neat to recognize great thinking by having students share those thoughts on Twitter. Problem is, I couldn't ever remember to actually do it. Still think it would be a neat idea for someone to try. (Martha Thornburgh)
This past year we used a microblogging platform in a couple of ways. We wound up going with shoutem The first way was to set up homework hotlines and lifelines within the wiki. Students could "tweet" out their question and a lifeline can walk them through it in concise text message-ish assistance. The second way was similar to what was mentioned already, as an announcement board. I would say that making the microblogging accountable via grades didn't work, attaching a score or bonus system motivated many students, but the tools use slowly went by the wayside. I would explore next time a way to make it more substantive and used throughout the week, month, and school year. I think twitter's tools and accessibility would be much nicer, but managing private microblogging accounts on twitter sounds more difficult than it may be worth. (Michael Wacker)
I have recently set up a Twitter account for my classroom, and besides using at as an announcement board as mentioned above, I am planning on having students create Tweets summarizing the day's events. For example a short Tweet about what was learned in Science or Math on any given day. It would help students with their summarization skills. I also plan to put one student/team in charge of tweeting for the day/week and limiting the number of tweets per day so we are not spamming the account. I think it also needs to be mentioned about making a thoughtful tweet instead of using it as a chat room which younger students tend to think everything is online. "Hey","What's Up", "Hiiiii" are not acceptable tweets. I think a lot of parents would subscribe to get constant updates about what their students are learning in class.(Damon Boyer)
I will be using Twitter in the ways you all describe to send information and homework announcements to parents as well. The one thing I would like to do that I have not seen anyone talk about is to set up an account that is some thing like @penpal that my class and a class in another part of the country will both subscribe to and having students in both classes post to that account. Its nto as tidy as a tradtional pen pal, but it is faster and gives a greater chance for multi-student interaction that is visable to both teachers. (Ben Glover)
As a primary principal I am not necessarily using Twitter in the classroom, but from Twitter I obtain extremely useful information, tips, ideas which I distribute and share to my staff. I love posting their questions and problems, and always impressed with the replies I recieve. It is like having a professional support group. (Kirsten Holland).