Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Twitter Update

I've mentioned earlier on my blog that I want to incorporate Twitter into my classroom this year. I went ahead and created a handout for my students to give them an initial idea of the role Twitter will play in the classroom. Here is a link to the handout I created: Use of Twitter. It is still a work in progress, but I think it's a good start. Any suggestions and improvements are appreciated.

At a district workshop this week, I approached our IT coordinator with my handout and my ideas for using Twitter in the classroom. The IT coordinator seems excited about the idea and is a strong believer in it's use. She is worried a bit about our building principal buying into it. She approached him once before about Twitter and although he didn't completely dismiss it, he has concerns about student safety. I guess the worry is that people besides students and teachers will have access to what students are tweeting about. The IT coordinator is planning on meeting with the District Superintendent to discuss the idea of using Twitter in class. He's a very big proponent of technology, so we will see how things go. I just wanted to let people know about my experience with trying to integrate Twitter into my classroom. If you have any suggestions about selling my point to administrators or minimizing safety concerns, please post it here.

I think Twitter is a great resource, and I want to help students learn how to use it for educational purposes instead of frivolously following celebrities. It's been such a great learning tool for me that I feel obligated to share its benefits with my students.

2 comments:

  1. Taylor

    The handout looks really great, I wouldn't change a thing. Do you mind if I use it? I really like this idea too. I have a question though, would you have your own twitter account for each class (ex @biology, @chemistry) or one central account? As for the safey concerns each Twitter account can be locked and only those tht request access can be granted it, so I don't really see this as an issue, it can be quite anonomous.
    Kristian

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  2. Thanks for the comment. Yes, feel free to use it in any manner that you'd like. Currently, I teach biology and general science, It's my first year teaching general science. I plan on using it just in my biology class this year. I want to test it out in a class that I've already got a good handle on. If it works well I may extend it to general science. If I would do that, I think I would probably make a different account for each class. I'm not sold on that yet. I will have a better idea after this school year. Thanks to Twitter, I've actually been in contact with a teacher in Florida who is currently using Twitter. The teacher gave me some suggestions for how to make it as secure as possible. Let me know if you have any other questions.

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