Use of Twitter in the Classroom

In the past, I spent a lot of time maintaining a classroom website.  I would also send a parent email every day.  Now, the email was a form email and the only thing I really had to change each day was what we had worked on.  This being said, these parent communication initiatives took time and I really wasn't sure how many people were reading what I had written.

In the past couple of years, I really scaled down my classroom website and decided to write a parent email once per week.  I was attempting to assess the "bang for my buck" by comparing what I was putting in, terms of time, and how much was being noticed by parents (my intended audience).

Unfortunately, after a long week, the once per week emails seemed like too much work most Friday nights.  I would write some weeks but other weeks would be missed.

I was looking for a form of parent communication that would allow me to update it when the mood struck or when I needed to send info.  I thought about a blog because I could update it at any time but that seemed like it might lead to a lot of typing.  I had set up a classroom Twitter feed in the past but stopped using it.  I decided to try again.

As a class, we are tweeting about things that are happening in our classroom.  Using one of our iPads, we will sometimes add a picture.  It is great because we discuss what we are going to write (and how we are going to edit what we want to say so it is under the 140 characters) and we tweet it right then.  I don't have to remember to or find time to communicate it after school.  The students are thinking of things we need to communicate.  It is a "real time" update of what is happening in our classroom on a daily basis.  If a parent was following our class on Twitter, they would know exactly what to discuss over supper and "nothing" would not be an acceptable answer to the question, "What did you do at school today?"

There are at least two possible negatives we have encountered so far.  One is that I am not really sure how many parents are accessing our class tweets.  We are being followed by only three parents.  Others can view our tweets without following us but we can't be sure they are doing so.  Two is that up until now, our use of Twitter is teacher-guided and driven.  There was an article in the most recent ETFO magazine where students were tweeting on their own.  They were also following and communicating with other classes.  I am not sure I am ready to hand control over to students yet but we are inching forward and hopefully the old teacher can become more comfortable with students calling the shots in this area.