Not Only Birds Tweet

If you had told me a couple of years ago that I would be writing a blogpost about tweeting, I would have said that you were nuts. My technical life was and is so full with three email accounts and Facebook, that I did not even open a twitter account until this fall. Now, however, I see the advantages of tweeting. I can follow anyone I please without the required friending. While I use Facebook to follow several educational sources, like Hoagies’ Gifted and Edutopia, there are many educational sites and people to follow. I plan to continue to only use Twitter professionally, which is good, because already it is filled to the brim with tweets. 

#Edtechchat
I participated in an #edtechchat twitter chat on Monday night. I could not believe how fast and furious the tweets appeared. I thought an hour might be a long time, but the time and tweets flew by. The topic was ebooks and how teachers and students use them. I participated and quickly learned that my post would not appear if I didn’t include the #edtechchat hashtag. This was an important lesson to learn because this week, our class participated in our first live twitter chat for the Global Read Aloud, Pax. We were originally scheduled to do it on Friday, Oct. 7, but school was canceled in Florida for a couple of the teachers because of Hurricane Matthew. On Tuesday, our class participated. In this case, there were a handful of third grade classes answering three questions posted by one teacher over the course of 30 minutes. Some of the kids in the other classrooms could tweet on their own. I just asked the kids what to type and they followed the screen on the smart board and I followed their lead. We had a lot of fun, and learned some new facts about foxes, and will live tweet again this Friday and the following Fridays while we read Pax. 

#genius hour
During the #edtechchat, I learned about #geniushour. I had read about something similar when I was researching Sal Khan for my presentation on Khan Academy. He got to go to a different teacher once a week to learn anything he wanted to learn as part of a gifted program. I think it is a good source, and am now following it, because kids need to have choice in their learning and follow their passions. Currently, I give my students 30 minutes a week to use for free choice. They typically create with Legos or create art projects. I am investigating how they might use that time to research topics of interest. One of our school administrators liked my tweet about #geniushour, so I have some local support. I will keep you posted, or you can reach me via twitter @MrsJMcCole1.