There are many different reasons to tweet, and I’ve blogged numerous times in the past about why I tweet. Today gave me another reason to love Twitter: it provides an authentic audience for student work.
Today we finished our first Social Studies unit on First Nations Peoples, and while my head is spinning with many different blog posts to write, I’m going to choose to write this one. For this final overall expectation, students shared their learning by creating a display for Aviva’s Awesome Aboriginal Art Gallery. We then opened our room to students in JK-Grade 3 to see our creations, ask questions, and learn more about the lives of different groups of First Nations Peoples.
While students were excited to share their learning with different students in the school, they were also excited to have the additional audience of our principal and vice principal. Thanks to Twitter though, our audience for today got bigger. At the second nutrition break, I received an email from one of the parents. She followed our tweets all day today and shared how much she enjoyed seeing what the students were doing.
Then tonight, I caught a tweet from George Couros, a principal in Edmonton. Here’s George’s tweet:
Overall, I was so happy with how things went today, that I just had to reply with these tweets:
Within minutes, George replied with,
He then shared the link to the post … and I was amazed at the responses! Educators and administrators from New York, Alberta, Wisconsin, and even Iran were reading and sharing these Daily Shoot posts. In just a few minutes and with the power of sharing, my students now have the WORLD as their audience. This is incredible … and makes me almost giddy with excitement on this Friday night!
Why do you tweet? How has Twitter made a difference for your students? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!
Aviva
Aviva,
I couldn’t agree with you more. Since talking to you I have been tweeting like made the things that are happening in the classroom. I also try to do a storify every day of what we did in class. I wasn’t too sure if parents like this but today I got a really nice message. I got a brand new student this week and her dad tweeted that he loves being able to see what his daughter is doing throughout the day since he doesn’t get to see her often. He also offered advice as to what she may like to do. It was really interesting to know that parents do love the connections that twitter has to offer. Thanks for the inspiration.
Thanks so much for the comment, Jonathan! I love your Twitter story. We often think of the fact that teachers can learn from and contribute to what we share here, but so can parents. Your story is a wonderful example of parent engagement, and I think that’s so important.
Aviva
Tweeting is possibly the most interesting things that I have seen teachers do. It connects to parents wanting to know WHAT DOES MY CHILD DO AT SCHOOL?
Some students don’t tell their parents, so it is great that at least teachers have got tweeting in mind.
I am sure that MANY teachers use Twitter in this way.
Yusra,
Thanks for the comment, Yusra! I agree. I think Twitter is a great way to give parents a glimpse into the classroom. I’m glad that you see the value in this too!
Miss Dunsiger