Twitter

I am thinking about using twitter as a communication tool with parents. One thing that does concern me is the fact that anyone could theoretically follow us and some may have profiles or pictures that are inappropriate for a school audiance. Although I doubt many people have the time or inclination to click on the twitter follower list, is there anyway to prevent people from seeing who is following a school account?

Thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Tags: twitter

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Permalink Reply by Aparna Vashisht on July 28, 2009 at 11:06am

If I may make a suggestion, try our site, www.parentella.com. You can post notices/homework/class events for parents in the class and only they will see it.

Demo Account:

un: Mr. Pencil
pw: demo

All teachers in a school can set up their class and invite parents. When you post something new, the system sends out automatic notifications to emails. We will expand the notifications to SMS as well by the end of the year.

I understand your concerns about privacy and the way I block my twitter account is by constantly weeding out folks. Parentella is free.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Biederbeck on July 28, 2009 at 12:55pm

I too plan on using Twitter in the classroom to keep parents more up to date on what is going on (actually planning on having kids update it) I think you have several options to stop people with inappropriate pictures or tweets from following you. One you can block them once you have noticed they have added you and two you can protect your tweets by making people ask for permission to follow you. I assume you'd know who the parents were that were following you so you'd let them in/ not block them so either of these methods would work I think.

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Permalink Reply by Heather Logan Weiler on July 31, 2009 at 2:01pm

For that reason I use Facebook and their filters. As I run a comprehensive special education program at the high school level I have parents and students with special education profiles as well as students enrolled in my classes to learn how to teach special education. The latter are on Facebook anyway, while the former are as well and most often are their parents. I use it for quick notes, send photos, Q & A as well as for communication. Twitter is too abstract and requires to much ideation summarizing as well as syntax complexity for most of the students.