As an ESOL elementary teacher, I see students for 60-90 minutes each day. The remainder of these students' school day is spent with the homeroom teacher, or other special area teachers. I chose to use Twitter as a way to connect with the other teachers at my school who also work with the ESOL students I teach. Most of these teachers were already on Twitter, so it was just a matter of getting those that were not already following me, and whom I was not yet following, to connect. We can now easily share classroom moments and activities, helping to insure we are all integrating the common themes and concepts for whatever the current IB unit of inquiry might be. Our Twitter connection goes beyond what could be conveyed in an email, which has been our primary means of communicating and sharing ideas and information. In addition, other teachers and administrators within our school and district can "see" many of the things happening in our classrooms. This type of sharing is even more important to those teachers like me who do not have common planning time with the homeroom teachers.
That's a great way to have teachers communicate and know about what each teacher is doing in class. At our school we do not use Twitter the same your school does. I like it a lot.
ReplyDeleteGreat to see the different ways you use Twitter. It seems like a low effort but high reward as you already know some folks on Twitter its just a matter of tending to the garden so to speak and get it going. You are correct that email and Twitter are different conduits for communication and thus can be very different in content and purpose.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this type of sharing can be helpful to those of us who do not have a common plan time with the general education teacher.
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