Is anyone using Twitter in their teaching?

I teach high school social studies and have decided to open a seperate account in Twitter to tweet updates re class, homework, and misc info to my students and their parents who want to follow me. I am curious if anyone has used Twitter with students, and if so, how. What grade level? What have been some of the issues? Have they been open or closed accounts?

Thanks.

Sue Palmer aka "masterymaze" on Twitter
www.masterymaze.com
www.educationallysound.com

Tags: twitter

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Permalink Reply by Jack Hutchinson on August 6, 2009 at 11:24am

My admins just banned all Twitter, Facebook, and all other social networking for good. One girl got cyberbullied in a chat room AFTER school and OFF campus. ONE INCIDENT.So we all have to suffer and take the hit. n It feels like the middle ages here right now.

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Permalink Reply by Sue Palmer on August 6, 2009 at 12:56pm

All of these things re blocked in school and will continue to be. I am thinking about afterschool and at home. I am staying away from Facebook, although I have a page. That is too scary for them. Twitter "appears" more mainstreem, I think and hopefully will get less opposition.

We do have YouTube and most sites except Facebook open to teachers which is good. They don't want the teachers using school time to hang out on Facebook so I understand that.

Sue

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Permalink Reply by Jacqui Murray on August 6, 2009 at 11:28am

I'm going to use it to stay in touch with my K-5 parents. Those short messages are very user-friendly and I think it'll be a great way to promote transparency at my school. One of the challenges with younger students is getting parents to understand my mission. So many adults are tech-savvy (as a separate issue from students being UTD on Web 2.0)

Not for kids, though, for all the usual reasons.

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Permalink Reply by Sue Palmer on August 6, 2009 at 1:00pm

That is where I started but then I decided to let the students follow me as well. We shall see how it goes. It is a seperate account and I will not reply-- just "tweet". I have 100 students so really don't have time to "converse". I just want to broadcast reminders, etc.

I am thinking I will set it up private to keep lurkers from the kids? Not sure.

Sue

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Permalink Reply by Fred Ravan on August 6, 2009 at 12:33pm

There is a blog called Teach Paperless that has ideas about using twitter in the classroom. The English Raven is another site worth investigating.
Jacqui: I am intrigued by your use of twitter to keep in touch with parents. I would love to hear more about it.

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Permalink Reply by Sue Palmer on August 6, 2009 at 1:01pm

Thanks Fred!

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Permalink Reply by Jacqui Murray on August 6, 2009 at 5:31pm

Hi, Fred

I, like Sue, teach volumes of students--400 last year. Because tweets are only 250 letters, I can alert parents quickly on what happened in class. Homework, quiz coming up, etc. I will only allow parents to follow me, though, so I can easily track who's UTD.

I do an orientation at the beginning of the year on the class wikis, online grading, etc. I'll let parents know then, as well as in my e-newsletter.

So much of teaching is keeping parents comfortable with the class so they trust me caring for their children.