Twitter for the Classroom??

As Twitter is gearing up to go public, it seems that the social networking site is coming up in conversations more and more. Many of our students have twitter accounts and are tweeting quite frequently. But are they really saying anything? Not yet.

Most teachers will say that twitter is a distraction in the classroom and will request that it be blocked by the district. Last year we saw exactly that and shut down access to twitter district-wide for students. As we continued to monitor student twitter feeds we found out that many students were still tweeting during class hours. They were most likely tweeting from their cellular devices since they could not access it on the network. Of course what we saw on student feeds was irrelevant to their education and usually hinted towards some sort of drama that took place in the hallway before class.

This year we decided to take a different approach. We know that humans, by nature, will misuse something if they don't know the purpose for it. Our school district may be the only place where students can be taught the purpose of social networking and how to use it effectively. One of our teachers, Gabriel Snyder, was the first to step forward and take the challenge. By having students create school twitter accounts, separate from their personal accounts, we believe we can teach students how to connect with the world in a positive way.

Gabe plans to have his students use twitter to take notes during class using the hashtag method and connect with experts in their related field of study. We believe that this will be able to engage students in the classroom and convey to them that there is a world outside of celebrity entertainment. Our plan is to support our teachers who are exploring this tool and help create best practices to use in the classroom.

~Dan Townsend | Tech and Media Director