Group items tagged

I love incorporating Twitter into my professional development for teachers. To do this I share the Twitter tag with participants and ask them to Tweet before, during or after our time together depending on the task at hand. I provide the tag for Tweeting to give my students a place and way to share their thoughts and ideas. This serves as a great way I have specific times I check out the Tweets (i.e. work time) and when I bring participants back together we build on those Tweets.

weet to capture reflections during field trips. If you're in a school where cells are banned, you may be able to have students bring them on field trips. If that is not allowed, the chaperon's devices can be used. Rather than have students walk around taking notes. Have them Tweet their reflections. You can set up a tag for your tweets if the place you are visiting doesn't already have one. Give parents the feed and they'll instantly know what their child did at school today and can have robust conversations about it. When students are back at home and/or school a review of the tweets could lead to powerful conversation or could serve as a launch for further study i.e. pick the most interesting tweet or set of tweets and create something to share with others about the topic you are tweeting about. This could be a podcast, video, blog post, etc. These digital creations can all be posted in one place as a reflection collection and even shared on the website of the school and place visited.

When Hiram Cuevas from Virginia wanted his students to understand the Black Saturday bushfire tragedy that had befallen Victoria in 2009, our students arrived at school before the start of the school day, and his stayed late, so that we could establish a meaningful discussion around the events. Our students and staff were so touched that kids and teachers in a school as far away as Virginia were interested and concerned about events in our part of the world.

Probably most important: establish good connections with the teachers you will be working with. Remain in constant contact, double check your time zones (including quirks like daylight savings time policies in each community), and test your connections before starting time.