2014 - Twitter

I will set up a roster so that each day the children will become responsible for remembering to tweet and share our learning. Another easy example of creating a purpose for writing that will be read by an authentic audience and for promoting "student voice" in the classroom. As well as following the Year 1 and 2 classes from Pinehill School we have found 2 other classes of 6-7 year olds in the US who are tweeting their learning on a daily basis who we will follow.

Mrs D's 1st graders      @RamblerStars

Mrs Mastin's 1st graders    @Mastin1stgrade
Pinehill Room 11    @Pinehill11
Pinehill Room 22    @Room22Superstars
Pinehill Room 8      @Pinehill_Room8 

Twitter in the Classroom @Chelseakids10

I was amazed at how enthusiastic the children became with this social media tool. There were 6 or 7 children in the class who became regular users and would constantly want to tweet the photo of their work. They created their own Twitter accounts at home and were regular followers. the Stars of the Week photos were always tweeted to the world! Thank you Thomas and Ayden for remembering each Friday. They also enjoyed seeing what the other classes we followed were doing and would often try out the apps they had used.

Twitter in the Classroom

Follow me - @jennielesueur

I have already written a post about the benefits of teachers using Twitter to keep up to date with new information. This post will deal with the benefits of using Twitter in the classroom.

WHY and WHO benefits? - Mainly the parents at present.
This is where my iPhone becomes another useful tool in the classroom. I take a photo of a learning moment and tweet it with a caption. I have a number of parents who follow me on Twitter so they get an instant update on what is happening with their child in the class.


 My aims for the future use of Twitter in the classroom:

- to tweet a photo/ caption each day, sometimes more
- to tweet a photo with a child of one of the parents who follows me
- to tweet information about what is happening daily in the classroom/ syndicate/ school
- to tweet information about what is going to happen in the classroom/ syndicate/ school - eg sports events, spelling tests, reminders
- to get the children involved so they are able to choose the "tweetable" moment

A sample - view these tweets -
Carnivore or Herbivore
Stars of the Week 
Kelly Sports on the Field

              

Twitter for Teachers @jennielesueur

 

All teachers should have an iPhone



The staff at Pinehill had begun blogging in 2011 as well as me. I followed their blogs and often “borrowed” their ideas.

I now follow them on Twitter and this helps me keep up to date with new ideas to use in the classroom. The educators I follow tweet links to a huge range of websites and references about all fields of education, not just IT information.

Twitter has become my main resource for

professional development reading. Every day I try to quickly scan through the tweets and "favourite" or email the link to myself for future reference.
One of my goals for next year is to either:

- encourage other staff to follow me on Twitter so I could retweet links to sites they might find useful or
- regularly email them the links to these sites.
I am preparing an introductory information pack to present to staff at a PD meeting.

Our Class Blog - 2012

These days our class blog is on our 4 class computers at all time. It forms part of the daily programme. If the children want to go on the computers before school they have find something to do on the blog.

It contains all the links to websites that I use for learning activities during the day. The children learn to navigate their way around the blog to get to maths, spelling, writing, reading, COT links and any other websites we use. I try to keep it up to date with current happenings around the world that they might be interested in. At the moment there is a link to the world record free fall jump from space.

Click this link to take you toThe Chelsea Bachelors Blog as it is today



End of Term 3 - September 2012

This year - 2012, I have become a lot more confident experimenting and trialling new web tools to share on our class blog. The ISTE conference and following educators on Twitter has helped sort what web tools to use.

You will find examples of the following throughout our class blog -

-       fotobabble

-       wallwisher

-       picasa web album slideshows and movies

-       voki

-    Wordle

-       Storybird

-       Glogster

-       Go!Animate

-       Blabber

-    YouTube videos (our own)

There are further detailed explanations and examples on the separate pages found on the right hand side bar of this blog.