when I talked to my mother earlier this week, she told me about a 2nd grade teacher who was using twitter in her classroom. my mom of course was blind-sided by this, she barely gets facebook and can not even begin to comprehend twitter.
this immediately made me think of my boys in kindergarten and 2nd grade, while they are both every into what I am doing on-line (twittering, facebooking, and blogging). it is my kindergartner who is really into it, you can read my blog posts; my social media butterfly and ed and his women on my the water is fine blog to see just how into it he is.
naturally as soon as I got a chance, I googled it and sure enough, a couple of 2nd grade teachers in maine are using twitter for their students to communicate. after reading the article and looking up the twitter accounts for these teachers (which were both protected), I really started to think out this.
while I can definately see the learning value and the knowledge that the students will gain from this experience, I have some reservations about it. for the most part, the twitter community is adults (I have found a few teenagers on twitter, but only a few). my twitter profile is public meaning that anyone on twitter (or on the web for that matter) can see my tweets. I use discrestion because of that, but there are things that I tweet that I don't think I would want my son or his classmates to read as part of a school assignment. I am just wondering if there is another fourm or site that would be better suited for this? what are your thoughts?
1 comment:
This is nothing more than another version of having penpals. The account is protected and no one other than those that the teacher allows can comment or even view the student conversations. The class accounts do not randomly follow people. The only allowed followers are other 2nd grade classrooms, parents, and school personnel. It is in compliance with COPPA (the federal law to protect children online) and with our district policies. Just like we teach our children to wear a helmet the first and every time they ride a bike and we expect them to wear seat belts from Day 1 when they are in a car and we teach them to look both ways when crossing the street and we teach them not to talk to strangers, we have to teach our kids how to behave responsibly online. Digital citizenship skills need to be taught and learned. Mr. Thompson's students and my students are learning how to be safe online as well as how to write clearly and how to think about what they are learning. (Yes, I am one of the teachers in the article.)
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