Tweeting with my class!

This afternoon from 1:30pm-2:30pm my class were involved in twitter conversations with a range of schools around NZ. We used the hash tag #kidsedchatnz.

I used my twitter account and as the class came in from lunch we started reading the tweets that were being written and we started replying and then started asking our own questions.

My class loved reading, responding to and writing their own tweets. I actually wrote them but they told me what to write.

Most children were really engaged for 40 minutes. A few stayed on the mat with me while the rest of the class did other topic based learning.

Here is the post we wrote as a class at the end of the day.

http://room7vardonschool.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/using-twitter-to-connect-with-others.html

Here are some of the tweets:

Positives:

• using social media with the class - they are learning how to use these tools (even though they are too young to have an account of their own they are seeing good examples of how to use this tool)
• the conversations children were having with other NZ schools
• the links my class were making with other schools and other children
• discussions around the question being asked on twitter e.g one questions asked was "How does your teacher help you with connecting with other?"

I don't think there were any negatives, apart from a few children getting wriggly towards the end. I would really like to try setting up a class twitter account because I don't really want to use my personal account (which is mostly teacher stuff anyway) but with a class account we can really make it child friendly.

Watch this space!