Twitter in the Classroom

I remember first hearing about Twitter in 2008 at the University of Western Ontario from my Literacy teacher Dr. Kathy Hibbert (@khibbert). While she was very enthusiastic about it, I was rather reserved. Twitter has picked up so much momentum since then, but I was still unsure on how or why to use it, not only for personal but professional and class use. However, a couple of years ago I started out very slowly by testing out a personal account @KatieGouett - but I must admit I rarely used it.
Last year a number of schools and classrooms in WCDSB were actively using Twitter accounts to communicate with students and parents about learning and activities and I decided to join in too. I first created a professional twitter account @MrsGouett and then decided to take the leap and start a classroom account to use with students @Paul_GradeEight. I really think it was fear holding me back from exploring this learning opportunity before. But I realized that many students already use Twitter, and if they don't, they probably will in the future. What better way to teach students how to use technology responsibly than in the classroom as a group?
I created a "Tweeter" classroom job where one student submits to me a Learning Highlight every week that I will post. We are still working on meeting this weekly goal, but making steady progress. I was especially excited when I actually figured out how to embed our class Twitter feed into our D2L site!
What I like best about our class Twitter page are the regular and natural conversations it offers. Students are always interested to see if we have "followers" (we don't have many!) and who we are "following." Recently, someone followed us and when we viewed their account we realized they were probably just looking for more followers, not in what we had to say. This presented an opportunity to decide if we should be "blocking" them or leaving it (most said to not "block"). We have also had a good discussion around who we should be following - who will be positive and offer content we would be proud to have on our Twitter stream? What might be some non-examples of this?
Are you interested in trying Twitter out for yourself or classroom?
WCDSB has created Twitter Guidelines to help you get started with helpful advice and steps.
Take the leap and learn with your students - fumbles and mistakes and just well-planned learning opportunities!

Until next time,

Katrina