Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Slice of Life: Slow as a Snail

Yesterday in class, I introduced our class twitter account @228bes.  I purposely chose to hold back on our class account this year until the time was right. Last year, we sent a few tweets randomly and I wasn't sure of the purpose.  I knew the purpose, but I didn't feel like I did a good job for defining why we had a class twitter account.  I spent this summer learning and hearing over and over: break down the walls and allow students to expand their audiences.  I know this, but I didn't succeed last year.

This year, I chose to start as slow as a snail with technology.  A shift from the past but one that I wanted to try.  I was surprised as I introduced our twitter account to my class. Only two students knew what twitter was and a handful thought it was all about the #hashtags. Interesting....and we discussed digital literacy and the importance of knowing their tweets are alive and represent our class.  We sent our first tweet @katemessner to share that we started our new read aloud. I "promised" that she would reply to our tweet and luckily for me she did.  We are going to send tweets about our read aloud:  Hide and Seek.  The students are going to compose them, send them and then as a class we will share them.  I started as slow as a snail but this time around the students will have purpose along with ownership.  Already it feels better than last year.  I like slow as a snail.  Thank you to the Slice of Life Community of writers. You can check out other slices here at Slice of Life.

5 comments:

  1. Purpose with ownership. That says it all. Congrats on relaunching Twitter with your students, Maria!

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  2. I'm using Twitter for the first time this year too. My students are obviously younger than yours, so I'm owning a lot of the responsibility so far. We wrote to one author who didn't respond and they sort of lost interest, but we have a few moms faithfully retweeting us, so that makes it exciting!

    PS: I love Hide and Seek! Great book.

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  3. I love how you started slow with something so not slow and tried to understand along with your kids. Interesting their perceptions. Sometimes our students seem so on the edge of technology - it seems the direction of purpose in often still up to teachers to explore with them.

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  4. What fun! Sometimes, good ideas need time to percolate before they are ready to be implemented. And how awesome that Kate tweeted right back!

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  5. Maria,
    I love this line - started as slow as a snail but this time around the students will have purpose along with ownership. Technology can be fast paced and one thing leads to another. I love your small intentional moment and focus with Kate Messner. We too have a twitter account but I haven't launched it yet. You have given me some good thinking. Great photo for twitter avatar too.

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