Twitter in Classrooms

One of the first people I addressed in a tweet was @CAFirstGrade, Julie Simmons’ first grade classroom in Ohio. They were using Twitter via an iPad during their independent writing time. Later in the week, they tweeted during shared writing using a SmartBoard. It was fun to tweet with them and gain insight into their daily lives.

The Twitter bug had bitten by then and I was sharing with anyone who listened about the potential I was beginning to see of using Twitter in classrooms. At the same time, two second grade teachers (Christi Overman and Cathy) in my school district were getting SmartBoards. This weekend, they both set up Twitter accounts to use in their classrooms.

Today @superkiddos (Christi) and @BloggingBees (Cathy) began tweeting their learning. I could feel their smiles and excitement as I read their tweets on my phone since I was out of the district at a meeting. By the end of the day, Christi’s students started a chart titled: Things We Learned from Twitter.

If you are part of the Twitter community, please consider following these classrooms. Amy Ludwig VanDerwater (@ThePoemFarm), from The Poem Farm, tweeted back and forth with Christi’s students today, making them feel special and important in the community outside of the classroom. Community is powerful and showing our students that their voices matter is important.

If your students tweet, will you leave a comment so I can follow you too?