Back in the Swing of Things --PLUS, Twitter as a Teacher's Tool?

This year I'm making myself a promise. I'm promising to make more time for myself, and more time to blog about the things I love, namely- Teaching. Last year my blog took a back seat to life changing, a challenging class, school-wide initiative .. etc, etc, etc. But, I guess there are always things that can get in the way of doing things on your to-do list. This year, however, I want to get back to basics. Teaching and blogging .... loving my job, learning from others, and sharing my classroom fun. Period.

Twitter in the Classroom?

This year I'm trying something new. A goal our school community has this year is staying in better contact with parents. Many parents work full time and may not know what we do in our classroom from day-to-day. Not to mention, kids like to go home and say they did "nothing" all day. NOT TRUE!! We do A LOT! I'm sure you do too. Enter Twitter ....
At an inservice at the beginning of the school year we were lucky enough to have Alan November speak to our entire faculty. He mentioned some really great ways to include technology into the classroom. My takeaway from that day was using Twitter as a communication tool. I went home, set up an account, and started Tweeting away.

Some questions I had:
1. How will i get parents involved in our classroom tweeting?
2. What are some potential questions parents may have (or concerns)?
3. How will my students be involved in a way that is safe and appropriate?

1 and 2. I collaborated with other teachers in my building who were also interested in starting this new journey. One of them created a letter to parents explaining how we would be using Twitter in our classroom, laying out the ground rules, and asking for permission to include their child in the process. This was the most important step for us. I want the parents in my classroom as partners and to be on board with our routines. Here is the letter she drafted:

I only have two students whose parents have not given permission, so I think that's pretty good. I'm still trying to get parents on board to follow us. So far I think 1/3 of the parents are followers. It's so fun and easy to tweet out info about our class! Here is a post from this week:

So is tweeting worth it? Here is an article from NEA.

Want to incorporate learning into the Twitter process? Here are some products I found that can have your kids "tweeting" about their learning! 

• Classroom Twitter Feed by the Tallest Teacher
• To Engage them All's Twitter Board is what I printed for my classroom!

Are you using it? How? Has it been successful? I want to hear from you!