Day 39: Being Connected

Daily Blog Challenge Day 39/365

October is Connected Educators Month.  Originally, I thought social media was to share pictures and Twitter was to follow celebrities. In the year since I have been investing time in Twitter, I realize this is not the case (you can still follow your favorite celebrities, but there are many more opportunities).

Twitter has made me more aware (a few of my strong beliefs have been shifted due to the information I have been exposed to on twitter), I have found a wealth of resources/ideas and it is starting to give new possibilities for my students. Through connections on Twitter, I have two Skype Performances setup and I am working with another teacher to plan a third. My students help me tweet about our day and we tweeted with classes/teachers from Ireland, Dubai, Canada and the United States. These connections have been made in less than a month and I cannot wait to see all the other possibilities for my students.

The best twitter exchange to date happened last week. My fourth graders are Skyping with a class from New Hampshire and I was reviewing with them what would happen during this Skype. One of my students is a big NASCAR fan and when I mentioned Nee Hampshire, it made him think of racing. I am not sure why this state connected with racing for him, but it started something wonderful.  I know from tweeting with the teacher we are going to Skype with that she is also a big racing fan. I mentioned this to my class and they immediately wanted to know her favorite driver. Lucky for us, she was on her lunch break and responded to us. There ended up being five tweets sent back and forth about favorite drivers and my students were so excited to see her responses. I realize racing has nothing to do with music and we checked for responses in between activities, but this was a great opportunity to communicate with someone many states away about something that many of my students are interested in.

Twitter and social media can give our students many opportunities. I am excited to see what other things cone from using Twitter in my classroom.  I have one Twitter account to send updates to parents (pictures, videos and audio clips) and this account is private.  I have another account that is public and this is the account that my students help me tweet from.

I would love to hear how you use Twitter or Social Media in your class.