learning through tweets

I'm sure every one has heard about twitter, how can you not, there's always some stars tweet all over the news lately.  What I never considered was that there was another side to tweeting..a more educational side.  I know I shouldn't be surprised, learning can come from anywhere these days, and I have to admit its actually a great idea!  Not only can your students connect with you through a tweet they can also connect to the school, their parents, and most importantly....THE WORLD.  I've always heard the saying "The world is your oyster" and I know its supposed to me the world is yours to explore and with twitter that exploration gets a whole lot better!

Once I thought about using twitter in the classroom, or for my own personal use to connect with other educators and talk about important topics I looked at two great sites that helped me jump start some ideas.

   
The first site was The Teachers Guide to the use of Twitter in the Classroom.  This site was a great way for me to understand how to use twitter in a K-8 classroom.  It also gave some great examples of teachers that are tweeting in their classroom, and of course given the information I had to look and see for myself.  Specifically, I looked at MDEkinderkids twitter account and found a great resource for tweeting in the kindergarten classroom (not to mention a great blog from the class as well).  After looking at her classes tweets and the article on twitter in the class I have decided that I will be using twitter in my classroom for several reasons:

• To keep parents informed in the classroom, not only is it a great way to keep parents involved and active in their childrens learning it also gives a great reassurance for parents to know that their children are not only learning but having fun.
• To connect with other classrooms around the world, it would be a great way to get information about different cultures and could be a great learning experience.
• To teach writing skills, this is a great way to get kids to write.  Having them write out a tweet before it is posted is a good way to to teach grammar skills needed throughout an education.
• To teach communication skills, since twitter only allows a certain number of characters children have to be learn how to get a point across in an interesting and appropriate way. 

Another helpful site was called How does #Edchat connect educators which helped me realize that not only can you use twitter for the classroom (and to catch up on what all the stars are doing) its also a great way to connect with other educators and ask questions and have discussions.  By putting #Edchat in the search you can connect with other teachers every Tuesday ( now called Teacher Tuesdays) at noon and 2 and discuss whatever topic was polled as the most important of the week.  I think that this is not only a great way to connect with other teachers through out the world it is a great way to learn something new from it.  I will definitely be watch for this chat on Tuesday to see what will be discussed and how it can help better my own education.  If anyone is interested in what these topics can include just check out the polls and explore the endless opportunities twitter has to offer.

All in all, whether its to create an account for your classroom or to learn something yourself twitter is definitely the way to go.  Its simple and short and there's always something new when your learning through tweets.