September 11, 2009

Below is our newsletter for the week. Remember, we are not the end-all, be-all! We are just teachers sharing our thoughts and ideas with you. Feel free to modify strategies you receive from us to fit you and your classroom.

Today we lift up and remember all those who perished in the 9/11 attacks as well as their families. May we all learn how to live in peace with one another.

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Weekly Tip: Are You a Tweeter?

Are you a tweeter? Not sure what that is or how it pertains to you? A “tweeter” is someone who posts short statements called tweets on the website Twitter.com. This is yet another social networking site but with a different twist. Instead of masses amounts of information, games, etc. posted on large personal sites or profile pages, Twitter offers members a way to stay in touch with others through very short one or two sentence posts. In fact, a limit is set on the number of characters – 140 in total (including spaces) that will be shown in the post. Why address this topic in this week’s newsletter? Tweets can be a positive learning tool in the classroom and can also serve as a very powerful way to promote positive parent communication.

Tweets as a Learning Tool

One way you can use the concept of tweets is as a closure activity. Have students work together as a class, in groups, or in pairs to develop a tweet of 140 characters or less (including spaces) that summarizes what was learned during class. Alternatively, you could have students restate an important concept in their own words. Want to check for understanding? Ask students to create a tweet sharing a thought or two about what was just presented during direct instruction. These tweets can be written on post-it notes or index cards and handed in.

Are you in a technology rich classroom with plenty of computers for everyone? Get students in groups or pairs and have them log in to the classroom twitter account and post their own tweet. I highly recommend that you approve all statements before they are posted to the account. Students can type in the posts on their own, wait for approval, and then hit the post button once everything is a-okay.

Tweets are also a great way for students to post and share very short summaries or main ideas of reading passages (think beyond reading classes – social studies, science, art, etc.). Another idea is to have students post math equations or puzzles of their own making. Turn that around and have them choose five problems posted by other students to solve for homework. What a way to motivate students and bring Web 2.0 into your classroom!

What are some other ways you might be able to use tweets in your classroom to enhance, assess, and motivate?

Tweets as a Communication Tool

Another way to use tweets is as a communication tool with parents. Remember those summary or closure tweets you had students write? Post these on a classroom twitter account for parents to read. If you have too many to post in one day, choose a few well written ones to post. This may encourage students to work harder writing concise and informative tweets. Parents will be excited to check the twitter account to see if their child or teen’s class tweet was posted for the day.

Another option is to write a short summary yourself of what was studied in the classroom that day. You can also post the homework for the day for students and parents to see. Posting birthday greetings to students, thank-you notes to parents, and positive notes about students will encourage parents to view the twitter account daily. Post quick “high-fives” to students for showing improvement, positive life-skills, or good behavior in class. This puts a smile on student and parent faces!

Parents can also subscribe to the classroom twitter account and receive post updates in their email or on their phone. This will also help make sure more parents are actually reading the posts you are providing. So often we go to a lot of trouble to post information on a website only to hear that parents are not utilizing it. When posts are directly sent to a phone via text message or email, you can be sure the messages are being received!

Lastly, twitter can also be a two-way communication tool. Parents can message you or reply to your tweets. These messages are sent to your email address on file. It is a great way for parents to respond to what you are doing in class and ask questions when needed.

How Do I Get Started?

You can easily set up an account by going to www.twitter.com. All you need is an email address. Use your school email address to set up a classroom account to be accessed by parents. If you also want to set up an account for students to use for classroom purposes (this will reduce clutter on a site accessed by parents), you’ll need a second email account. I recommend creating a new free account using yahoo, gmail, or netzero. If you have high speed internet at home, your internet provider may have also provided you with the ability to have up to 10 different email addresses. This is another option you are already paying for, so you might as well set up an account (or two) that can be used for classroom purposes.

Once you’ve signed up for a twitter account (or multiple accounts), you can upload a picture and input other information you want students/parents to see. Go to settings and fill out the information. You can set the time zone, language, post a short bio, and most importantly – protect your tweets! This option is found at the very bottom of the settings screen and is very important. When you check this button you take your twitter account OUT of the public view. This means that only those people you have approved can view your tweets. Give parents and students your twitter id and they can easily find you. They will request to “follow” your twitter account. Once you approve, they will see your tweets on their twitter account as posts.

If you create classroom twitter accounts for students to post problems, responses to reading, or other learning related posts, be sure to give them log-in information so they can access the account. Be sure to ask students to identify their posts with initials, class period, or student id so you are able to assess their efforts on twitter.

Keep in mind the following - Twitter is a relatively new networking tool and more people are joining every day. You may find that some parents and students already have accounts. This is also a new tool for the classroom, so you will definitely need to try it out in small segments. Maybe start your efforts with one class of students. See what works and what doesn’t before you begin using this tool with all of your classes. Small steps can lead to big jumps – in motivation, in learning, and in communication, so don’t be afraid to try out this new tool and see where it may lead you.