Classroom Tweets!

This past week I have learned a lot about Twitter in relation to teaching. I gained a lot of important information from two articles titled, A Must Have Guide on Using Twitter in your Classroom and Primary Perspective. These articles each provided tips and examples of how to use twitter in the classroom.

In A Must Have Guide on Using Twitter in your Classroom, there are a lot of great ideas for ways to use Twitter with your students. The site notes different areas where Twitter can be useful, including communication, organization, resources, and writing skills. The site then demonstrates different ways in which a teacher can promote these elements of education using Twitter. There are a couple great suggestions for using Twitter as communication that I really liked. For example, using Twitter as a way to have open office hours at all times of the day. Also, it can be used to silence students who often blurt out comments because now they can tweet them instead. A unique idea provided on this site is to use Twitter as a way to keep parents notified and up to date on what their children are learning. I think this is a great idea because it allows parents to feel involved and it provides them a chance to be a part of their child's learning and also connect easily with the teacher.

In Primary Perspective, the author discusses how she used Twitter with her 1st grade class. She uses a lot of graphics with her writing in order to show exactly how she did different things with Twitter for her class. It was very helpful to see the exact ways in which she Tweeted with her students. It provided a lot of insight into making the classroom a global experience. I like that she used Twitter to contact both parents of her students and professionals in different fields that her class was studying. She specifically states that she uses Twitter to show her students that they have a voice and that the world is listening to it. I liked this idea a lot and I liked that her students were able to learn about various perspectives and cultures. I think this would be a great tool for the ESL classroom because it allows for a global perspective and can help facilitate intercultural competence through Twitter.

Overall, I would love to use Twitter with my future ESL students. I think it could make the classroom a really interactive place and allow students to form global perspectives. This would be a great idea especially in the middle or high schools when students most likely will already have Twitter accounts of their own. It is a great way to keep in contact with students and learn from professionals all around the world!