We (well, really me) decided it was best to think about living with two Twitter accounts. We created teacher accounts first in order for them to get familiar with how Twitter works and to get comfortable with the tweeting process. After playing around this summer, we'll make new accounts to be the official communication of their actual classrooms. This way, they can follow whoever they want in order to learn about all the great integration ideas, and then have a fresh account in August.
Then it was time to start tweeting. They both fired off their first tweets and then learned how to follow people (yes, two free followers for me!). I suggested some other folks to follow in order to get them started. Then we worked through the hashtags, mentions, retweets, and favorites. They both tweeted their first pictures. And at that point, I about lost them.
It was like a light went off. Immediately, they were navigating around, finding app ideas, and following other people. It was cool to see how after just a few minutes, they were able to see the power that Twitter has to connect professionals. We even made our first connection to a third grade classroom in California.
Today, I was sitting in an all-day training and suddenly realized I needed to spark them. So I sent an email (not completely transformed to Twitter yet) and challenged them to tweet an update from their days in summer school. Less than a half hour later, I learned that Susan's students were working in their writing journals to make connections to their reading (complete with a picture). Leanna's students were planning out their first writing piece. Just made me think how I'd be able to keep up with what my child is learning in class in just a few seconds.
So if you are on Twitter, please follow along with @mrsguillory3rd and @mrsheath3rd as they learn new ways to challenge themselves and their learners. Hope you can join us!
